“To provide a more effective learning experience, you have to adapt course material for a new generation. They are learning in a different way than we did in the past,” said Mr. Chia-Wei Wu, Director of Learning Sciences and Technologies of School of Dental Medicine, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), in the seminar “Penn Dental Medicine Academic Initiative and the Influence of Technology Development in Medical Science” on November 7, 2017. In this seminar, Mr. Wu shared his successful experience in changing the teaching and learning environment at UPenn DMD programme, through introducing iPedagogy and incorporating the latest technological approaches.

Mr. Wu introducing iPedagogy to HKU students and staff

iPedagogy at UPenn DMD
Four technology-empowered initiatives have been introduced to improve student engagement and facilitate teachers in monitoring students’ performance:

• The iPad initiative
  • Starting from 2014, every newly admitted DMD student from School of Dental Medicine is given an iPad and they are required to bring the iPad to school on a daily basis for learning. Several apps essential for learning have been remotely installed for easy access to course information and materials. Students can keep the iPads even after graduation.
• iBooks
  • An e-book app, iBooks, was introduced as an teaching and learning platform in the DMD programme. It allows teachers to conveniently import teaching materials. Traditional textbooks used in the programme have been converted to an electronic format with better visuals. iBooks also enables students and teachers to access content of different media types at the same time, such as instructional videos, course schedules and published journal articles. Interactive online worksheets and quizzes are also included in the app. Furthermore, students can download the most up-to-date version of course books through iBooks anytime anywhere. What is more, email notifications are automatically disseminated to students regarding course content updates. As of this year, 24 electronic textbooks are now available on iBooks and most of them are clinical manuals and course documents for the 4-year study programme.

  The visual and graphic presentations of iBooks of DMD programme

• Online lectures
  • Tailor-made online lecture videos have been designed to cover various topics in one learning module, which concentrates the course, making its content more concise and efficient in content delivery. While using the iBooks app to watch lecture videos, simultaneous note-taking is also supported, hence students do not have to keep jumping from one app to another to jot notes. According to the feedback of course teachers and students, online lectures enabled them to have much more time to engage in in-class discussions*, as students are required to familiarize themselves with the course content by watching lecture videos before coming to class for in-class activities.
• Gamification
  • Merging game and studies – Various interactive platforms, such as Poll Everywhere and PaGamo, are used to engage students in classroom activities. Students’ feedback showed that they were very content with the use of games to learn as well as study for tests.

Success of iPedagogy
iPedagogy in UPenn received wide acclaim from students and academic staff. Students found that learning with iPads greatly enhanced their lab experience and practice, since they could easily refer back to demonstration videos and chapter content during laboratory experiments. They found carrying their iPads rather than heavy textbooks to class much more convenient. Teachers also noted that technology stimulated students’ in-class engagement – students were more likely to participate in anonymous polling and other interactive online activities in lectures. In addition, it was easier for teachers to closely monitor students’ performance and their learning progress with a centralized learning platform, so they could adjust their teaching plans and improve the syllabus conveniently.

On top of pursuing academic achievement in university, proficiency in technology literacy is an important skillset that students should acquire in university education nowadays. You and your department can take an initiative to make a change in your school! Contact us if you have an idea in mind.

Further reading

1. Debbie Goldberg. “Academic Initiatives: Penn Dental Medicine Furthers News Aspects in Curriculum, Technology and Wellness.” Penn Dental Journal, Fall 2016, p. 32.

Contact us: enquiry@teli.hku.hk

Thinking of incorporating technology in teaching but not sure where to start? We are here to help!

The TELI team, together with Information Technology Services (ITS), Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) and HKU Libraries (HKUL) endeavour to provide diverse and extensive e-learning support services to teachers.

Our team specializes on providing

• support in instructional design and content production, such as developing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs), flipped classrooms and instructional videos;
• pedagogical support in e-learning;
• support in using e-learning technologies in teaching, such as mobile applications, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), Moodle, e-portfolio, etc;
• professional development training for teachers;
• data analysis for teaching and learning.

You may also reach out to:

• CETL for face-to-face professional development training;
• ITS for Moodle-related enquiries, classroom lecture capture services and any technical enquiries in general; and
• the Libraries for Turnitin- and Endnote-related enquiries.

Empower yourself. Empower HKU. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are looking for ways to innovate your teaching!

You may also download the PDF version here.

How do you measure success? Many researchers, when evaluating Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), tend to measure the success of a course with a single metric, i.e. the completion rate. However, MOOCs generally have a large audience, and given the diverse background of MOOC learners, every learner differs in goals and level of engagement with the course materials. It may not be comprehensive enough to evaluate learner success by simple looking at whether he/she has finished the course; and the overall course completion rate alone may not suffice in evaluating the success of a MOOC.

This is what we learnt from a seminar entitled “Demystifying Learner Success: Before, During, and After a Massive Open Online Course”, delivered by Dr Elle Yuan Wang, a Research Scientist at EdPlus Action Lab, Arizona State University on August 1, 2017. Organized by the Faculty of Education, this seminar offered us a different perspective on how to measure success of a MOOC, an ongoing debate among researchers.

Learner Success in terms of Post-Course Career Development
Dr Wang believes that learner success can take many different forms – traditional assessment scores, or in other forms of post-course development, such as career development. In her 2014 study, she measured the post-course development of a group of MOOC learners two years after the end of the course using two metrics: whether learners (i) joined a relevant professional society; and/or (ii) submitted a paper in a relevant conference. By comparing learners’ post-course career development and in-course performance, she set out to investigate the relation between the two. The ultimate goal is to find out how career advancers differ from other learners in terms of their in-course performance.

The research targeted learners of the first iteration of The Big Data in Education MOOC, a postgraduate-level 8-week course offered on Coursera in 2013. Dr Wang was one of the teaching assistants of the course. (The subsequent iterations of the course have been offered on edX.)

The study revealed that:

• Career advancers who joined a professional society or submitted a paper earned better scores and were more likely to complete the course than non-advancers.
• Career advancers also demonstrated more frequent engagement with course components including course pages, lecture videos, assignment submissions, and discussion forums. For example, the page viewing activities of people who joined a professional society were much higher than non-members.
• However, even though career advancers tended to have more post-reading actions, they were not significantly more likely to post, comment, or vote than their peers.

Significance of the Research
This study enriched our understanding of how MOOCs potentially impact learners’ career development and the possible association between student behaviors and positive developments. All these findings are crucial for educators in developing and improving their MOOCs in the future.

A Special Note of Thanks
Hereby we would like to thank Dr Wang for not only sharing with us her research endeavours and findings, but also inspiring our work in learning analytics in HKU. Our colleague, Dr Leon Lei, completed The Big Data in Education MOOC on Coursera in 2013 and is now applying principles learnt from the course in developing our own MOOCs in HKU. Thank you, Dr Wang, for inspiring us. We look forward to more opportunities to further explore learning analytics and educational data mining with fellow researchers in the future.

*Note: Dr Wang’s research was conducted in collaboration with Ryan Baker, University Pennsylvania, and Luc Paquette, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For further details, please refer to the original research paper: Wang, Y., Paquette, L., Baker, R. (2014). A longitudinal study on learner career advancement in MOOCs. Journal of Learning Analytics, 1(3), 203-206. [PDF]

We are happy to share our recent projects in the latest issue of the Convocation Newsletter! Our work would not have been possible without the support of the university, our colleagues and students. Thank you for your support all along!

Both PDF and e-book versions are now available.

In this issue, we showcase our efforts and successes in developing

• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), namely Epidemics, Implant Dentistry, Materials in Oral Health, University Teaching and Dinosaur Ecosystems. These courses received wide acclaim, and exemplifies how knowledge can effectively reach a greater audience outside the University;
• the app Armillary Sphere, for the Common Core course Our Place in the Universe. It combines ancient intelligence with modern technology, and allows learners to gain “hands-on” experience in operating a venerable astronomical instrument virtually.
  The app is available on both Apple Store and Google Play Store.

Two Years in a Row
We also made an appearance in the Convocation Newsletter Summer 2016. For the second year in a row, we proudly present the results of our endeavours in e-learning in this publication. We explored the incorporation of pioneering learning strategies, such as blended learning, flipped classrooms and gamification, as well as the positive impacts they bring to the classroom.
We experiment, innovate and inspire. We aspire to continue our catalytic role in enhancing the quality of learning and making teaching at HKU more potent.

Want to catch up on the latest e-learning trends? Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you are eager to enrich learning with technology!

It is always a pleasure to meet new friends. On November 13, 2017, we were happy to welcome delegates from Philippine Normal University (PNU), an institution specializing on teacher education. Our guests expressed strong interest in HKU’s e-learning landscape and our team’s ongoing effects in enriching teaching and learning with technology.

(Third from left) Professor Ricky Kwok; (Fifth from left) Dr. Marilyn Balagtas, Dean, PNU College of Flexible Learning and ePNU; (Sixth from left) Prof. Jason Orozco, Deputy Dean, PNU College of Flexible Learning and ePNU; (Fifth from right) Ms. Lovely Airein M. de Guzman, Faculty, PNU College of Flexible Learning and ePNU; (Fourth from right) Prof. Niño Naldoza, Head, School of Information and Knowledge Management.

Introducing TELI and HKU’s E-learning Landscape
Our meeting began with Professor Ricky Kwok’s introduction of TELI’s missions:

1. Content production
2. Research on students’ online learning behaviour: By analyzing the data, we aim to
   • facilitate our teachers to improve their teaching; and
   • benefit other institutions through publishing our research.
3. System and application development:
   • We are constantly improving our Learning Management Systems, namely Moodle and open edX, and experimenting with different pedagogical ideas on these platforms.
   • Various apps have also been developed, including Newssary and the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (P-SHOC) app, to enrich students’ learning experience.
4. Collaboration and outreach: To maximize our impact on teaching and learning, our team also regularly collaborate with other institutions in organizing events and conferences. One major initiative is Asian e-Table.

Following Professor Kwok’s introduction, representatives from our team showcased our projects, including the production of Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), flipped classrooms and data analytics.

Roundtable discussion on the e-learning landscape of HKU and PNU; and challenges in developing online learning materials.

EdTech Demo: Introducing Useful E-learning Tools to Our Fellow Educators
Since our guests are teacher educators, we introduced several e-learning tools suitable for training teachers, including Google Slides, Kahoot! and Mentimeter. All these tools are free and can be used in any educational context.

“We want to make sure every student is covered with the e-learning tools we are using. No one is left behind,” said Mr. Donn Gonda, our assistant instructional designer.

We also showcased our equipment and productions in our multimedia office.
Showing our guests around our multimedia office.

It is our team’s mission to connect with the international academic community and promote knowledge exchange. It is also our pleasure to meet with fellow educators enthusiastic about e-learning. We look forward to more opportunities to connect with institutions worldwide!