On September 22 and October 20, 2015, the Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative (TELI) team facilitated an extraordinary “flipped-classroom” learning experience for the students in Professor Rick Glofcheski’s Tort Law class. The idea was to provoke their initiative in discussion of authentic legal issues.

To “flip” the classroom is to mobilise the classroom time to the greatest, that is to reserve as much time as possible for interaction among students. Before the large-group meet-up, short videos were prepared to consolidate students’ knowledge on legal principles, with each video covering a key concept.

In groups of five, students were seated in Loke Yew Hall. They analysed news articles as if they were analysing a live case in front of them. Discussion was completely student-led. Tutors simply observed group discussions and supplemented their ideas at times.

One interesting touch to the ‘Flipped Classroom’ was the use of Mentimeter, an online polling system. Students were invited to answer several questions online anonymously after watching the video lectures as well as to provide justifications for their answers. The answers were then shown at the beginning of the large-group class. In this way both students and tutors got a better understanding of common misunderstandings that might be incurred when learning about the topic.

It was extremely rewarding to the team to hear that students and tutors cherished this experience and were looking forward to more. Students pointed out that unlike tutorials, they really do engage in a discussion with one another. Tutors also believed that by not “dictating” the classroom, students were allowed more spaces for discussions, and would eventually benefit from them.

Dr. Masato Kajimoto’s MOOC HKU04x Making Sense of News is not only a treasure to anyone who is interested in Journalism; the fact that it is so successful also makes it a prized specimen for researchers, data analysts and online course developers alike.

On October 8, 2015, Dr. Masato Kajimoto was invited to discuss the findings on data analysis of his course and the next steps forward. The learning experience was designed to structure around short videos of lectures and key lesson summaries, supplemented by interactivity and forum discussions which were initially considered crucial by Dr. Kajimoto and his team. By the end of the course, details of student demographics, their behaviors (e.g., clicking and seeking) and performance were studied and surprisingly, the findings were contradictory to the team’s presumption. It was found that students who performed best in assignments did not have high engagement in forums, probably meaning that they did not require much peer assistance in understanding the contents.

The MOOC is currently being incorporated into an on-campus equivalent course, allowing undergraduate students to take the lectures online in alternative weeks. Dr. Kajimoto is planning to compare the performance of on-campus students and MOOC takers by giving identical quizzes. Although the findings will not come until the end of the semester, certain other benefits of flipped classes can already be seen. Dr. Kajimoto explained, “when the course [lecture] is online… they have to discuss the exercise [in tutorials]; they have to show the exercise to other students… I’m seeing better and deeper discussions among the students…”

The seminar ended with the promise to bring Dr. Kajimoto back at the end of the semester to share how the flipped classes worked.

Have you thought about learning a new skill like programming or brushing up your creative skillset in filmmaking? Are you naturally curious about why and how everything works?

Together with the General Education Unit, the Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative team will organize a two-day event on October 5 and October 6 to discuss the power of the Internet in making education open and accessible to all. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are a growing trend worldwide with educational content made openly available to virtually anyone who has access to the Internet. Active practitioners in the field of e-learning will discuss what massive open online courses (MOOCs) are and what they can do for you. A film screening of the award-winning documentary, Ivory Tower, will get you to question the value of higher education and open your eyes to alternative paths of learning. Facilitators will also share their experience with MOOCs and offer insight into its potential to reach new heights in student learning.

Learn more: http://gened.hku.hk/programme/detail?id=279

Registration
For HKU students and staff: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?ueid=39307
For public: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=39308

The brains and builders behind the Knowledge and Education Exchange Platform (KEEP) visited HKU to demonstrate this one-stop e-learning aggregator on September 21, 2015.

Professor Irwin King, one of the Principal Investigators of KEEP, and also his team from CUHK, demonstrated on how learners can easily fish out relevant education content in a sea of learning materials around the globe. On the other hand, the platform is a hub where teachers are encouraged to share ideas on pedagogical innovation. In the near future, the KEEP team will be focusing their work around learning analytics, gamification, social learning and mobile learning. “We really believe that active learning and more engaged learning is the way for the future, and we want to encourage that,” said Professor King.

Professor Ricky Kwok, Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning) at HKU, also made use of the occasion to share HKU’s initiatives in gamification with examples of making the Rubik’s Cube a pedagogical tool in a course on everyday computing, and also designing a game for the MOOC on Epidemics (which is currently on offer). “It’s all about how to engage and incentivize participants to take desirable actions […] we want to make learning happen, that’s why we want to try the gamification idea,” said Professor Kwok.

The two parts of sharing triggered intensive discussions on the floor. The audience was curious to learn the tricks to engage course learners from the beginning to end and to further investigate in how gamification can be meaningfully incorporated in different disciplines.

Over the weekend of 19-20 September 2015, the Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative (TELI) team participated in the EdTech Team Hong Kong Summit, which provided them exceptional insights by the amazing variety of how Google utilized and maximized their apps and projects for teaching and learning.

Google Views- Bringing you to Grand Canyon and More

Mr. Jim Sill, Director of Global Development for EdTechTeam, went on a tour to the Halls of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles in Versailles with participants.

One of the most inspiring sessions to the team was delivered by Mr. Jim Sill, Director of Global Development for EdTechTeam, on Google Views featuring 360° panoramic photo-taking – a project in which participants go on expeditions and record views for the Google Maps application. There are often places, such as heritage sites, inaccessible by vehicles and made filming of streets by the Google van impossible. Google is therefore recruiting volunteers to carry professional ‘Trekker’ into the bits and pieces of places on Earth. The views collected from places like the Arctic and the Grand Canyon have put all of us in awe, and have also become valuable assets for especially Geography, Architecture and Science students all around the globe to have a glimpse of what the world is like.

Volunteers carry the ‘Trekker’ that consists of 15 cameras
(Source: http://www.google.com/maps/about/images/treks/canyon2-carousel.jpg)

At the same session, teammates also learnt about Cardboard, Google’s virtual reality viewer. It allows teachers to take their students on expeditions to almost anywhere they can imagine. Combining the power of panoramic photography and Cardboard, it looks that that field trips, experiential learning and lab simulations will soon take on a whole new meaning. So what’s your idea about making good use of these new technologies?