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Implant Dentistry is one of the most dynamic and rapidly developing areas within oral health care. In spite of increasing popularity of implantology, it is a relatively new discipline within dental education and remains limited to post-graduate courses offered by dental schools in many parts of the world today.

With the vision to help dental practitioners gain clinical understanding of implantology and an opportunity to provide implant treatments to their patients, the Faculty of Dentistry of HKU (ranked No. 1 dental school in the World in 2016) developed this MOOC to provide a world-class quality, unbiased, evidence-based and clinically-oriented course in this discipline.

What are the contents covered in the course?
The MOOC includes 5 modules and runs over a period of 5 weeks. We will begin the journey of Implant Dentistry by exploring how discoveries in biology and technological developments lead to the current practice of dental implants. Then, we will examine clinical cases, diagnose our patients’ needs and expectations and learn the principles of treatment planning. We will learn step-by-step surgical procedures for placing implants and various restorative techniques, directed by current evidence and best practices. Finally, we will investigate major threats and complications of implant procedures and ways to ensure successful treatments and long serving implants.

Registration

Listen to our students and find out how they like our course!

The Logo
The Logo of Implant Dentistry MOOC features the joining of an implant screw and a scholar hat, signifying the importance of a good education in oral implantology. The four colours of the logo are based on the four colours of blue, green, gold and red of HKU’s coat of arm, following the university’s spirit to manifest virtue and to investigate things.

Sneak Previews

More sneak previews here.

How to become an Implant dentist YouTube	Minimally Invasive Surgery YouTube	Micro Surgery Instruments YouTube
The 3 main pathways YouTube	Suture Techniques YouTube	Implant Supported Provisional Restorations YouTube

We believe that online courses are more than just YouTube videos plus a quiz. In building courses online, we endeavour to create the most integrated and personal learning experience for our learners.

In this age of information explosion, with numerous education resources available already, why would somebody care to be involved in a MASSIVE open online course (MOOC) through participation in the discussion forum? Ms. Karen Carlson, an enthusiastic MOOCer and a star learner in the course HKU03x Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought, is kind enough to share with us her thoughts. To Karen, one of the best things about HKU03x is having an instructor who is “extraordinarily involved” in the course from the start. Discussion with the teaching assistant, Catherine, also prompts her to think further and ask questions on issues such as whether it is possible to have a morality that is not imposed from the outside.

The course instructor Professor Hansen’s ownership, together with the active involvement of teaching assistants and fellow learners, are great motivations. Without instructor ownership, a course tends to turn into just “YouTube plus a quiz”, which is hardly a good class. “A class is far more of an overall experience where everything is integrated,” said Karen, and this is exactly what we believe.

While we are flattered to receive Karen’s positive comments, it is also our pleasure to meet and greet our MOOC learners. To us, producing a MOOC is not just about uploading videos and quizzes, but is also about connecting with learners from all around the world and building an online learning community. We don’t just teach. We care. Contact us if you have anything to share about your learning experience in HKU MOOCs.

Further reading
Take a look at Karen’s blog for her deep reflections on our course and other MOOCs.

The following news might be quite useful for our freshmen and graduating class.

TELI x The Libraries: A project on Information Literacy and Academic Honesty

As a university student, you might be turning in 20-30 pieces of academic writing in a year from short reports to term papers. That could be quite daunting, especially for freshmen. TELI has teamed up with The Libraries to bring our students some tips and resources on improving your writing on these aspects:

• Avoiding plagiarism
• Doing citations properly with time-saving tools
• Checking for originality with Turnitin

Please visit the playlist here to find out more. Our librarians will also conduct several face-to-face sessions with students in selected Common Core courses to dig deeper on information literacy skills. Get ready with your questions, and let’s be stronger writers together!

Information Literacy

TELI x CEDARS: CRE & BLT online module
For those who are making plans for life after HKU, and have applied for the HKSAR Government Common Recruitment Examination and Basic Law Test in October, you may now join our online module developed in collaboration with CEDARS to get familiarized with the various types of tests. Overview of the test structure, useful tips on preparation and sample questions with adaptive hints are provided.

To register for this online module, please log onto:
https://learning.hku.hk/courses/course-v1:HKU+CRE001+2016/about

Good Luck!

Gamification is a powerful tool to motivate students to learn. One recent successful example is the CantoSounds project ¹ initiated by a team of Cantonese teachers from the School of Chinese. It is a versatile gamification platform for exchange students who often lament that Cantonese is a difficult language to learn. The CantoSounds team reached out a helping hand by providing self-learning online resources and gamifying the learning experience. The CantoSounds platform has been used in CHIN9511 Cantonese as a Foreign Language I and is now open for public access.

Creating a Versatile Gamification Platform for Self-learning

The CantoSounds platform now has over hundreds of videos and sound samples, as well as interactive learning materials, quizzes, and games, freely accessible online anytime. These materials are designed for self-practising pronunciation and romanisation outside class time, allowing teachers and students to focus on communicative language learning activities in class.

The system was rolled out in late January 2016. Through the system, students can watch videos demonstrating the explanatory of initials, finals and tones, click on images to listen to individual words, and do a simple quiz to test their understanding. All these actions give students game points. As they gain more points through progressive learning, they will be promoted to higher levels (from Newbie to Expert!). Learning is further gamified through providing different questions in every quiz quest, with instant feedback.

Creating an online gamification platform is not as difficult as one may think. The platform was built on WordPress with leveraging third-party plugins. For instance, CantoSounds used MyCred for the point system and WP-Pro Quiz for quizzes. A simple mini-game was embedded from the Quizlet flashcard platform. Less tech-savvy teachers can also update online content using WordPress’ ready-made editor backend.

Providing Extra Incentives via Gamifying the Learning Process

The team tested the platform with students in the course. In order to give extra incentives to students, 1% of the participation score of the course was allocated to the game platform. One mark will be assigned to students if they reach the highest rank (Expert, 1000 points) on the platform. Usually a mere 1% score cannot really motivate students, but the combination of course incentive plus gaming elements did a wonderful job in motivating students to hit the highest rank – Out of the 66 students who signed up, an amazing number of students (20) reached the Expert rank. This shows that students were attracted to use the system. With gamification, we can provide students with an engaging and “sticky” learning experience. This, we believe, is the power of gamification.

Gamification is a powerful tool to reshape students’ learning experience and maximize learning outcome. It is not only useful in facilitating language teaching, but can also be used in other courses. If you are looking for ways to motivate students to learn, gamification may be one way to try out.

References

• Barata, G., Gama, S., Jorge, J., & Gonçalves, D. (2013, October). Improving participation and learning with gamification. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on gameful design, research, and applications (pp. 10-17). ACM.
• Conquering the 4Cs: Creating Engaging In-class Activities
  https://tl.hku.hk/2016/03/conquering-the-4cs-creating-engaging-in-class-activities/
• DomíNguez, A., Saenz-De-Navarrete, J., De-Marcos, L., FernáNdez-Sanz, L., PagéS, C., & MartíNez-HerráIz, J. J. (2013). Gamifying learning experiences: Practical implications and outcomes. Computers & Education, 63, 380-392.
• Kapp, K. M. (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction: game-based methods and strategies for training and education. John Wiley & Sons.
• MOOC: Gamification https://www.coursera.org/learn/gamification

What does the future hold for vernacular architecture in Asia? In this concluding episode, we will try to look into this question and examine tradition, modernity, and cultural sustainability in the context of the Asian vernacular built environment. Register to take the course for free at http://tinyurl.com/architecturemooc and join learners from around the world on July 26, 2016. Find out more about it here!

Sneak Preview ( Week 5 )

Course Trailer