TDG – Development of Exemplary Courses on Scientific and Technological Literacy for the New Common Core Programme

Abstract

The project aimed to develop several exemplary courses on Scientific and Technological Literacy in the proposed Common Core Curriculum of HKU’s new curriculum. The PI collaborated with teachers in Science and Engineering Faculties to instigate 6 new courses, which were offered as 6-credits broadening courses in 2009, as a trial to study the following aspects: (1) Offering of courses by teachers from different faculties, (2) Offering of science-oriented courses with a tutorial component, (3) Courses offered by the Science faculty on humanities or global issues, and (4) Offering of Common Core courses of mathematical nature. The courses were converted into Common Core courses during 2010, 5 for the Scientific & Technological Literacy (S&TL) and one for the Global Issues AOI. A set of student course evaluation questionnaire designed specifically for the courses was devised. Many of the questions were eventually modified and adopted in the Common Core course SETL questionnaire.

Sessions were held for the course teachers to share problems and useful practices they learned from their courses. Issues warranting attention and discussion brought up at the sharing sessions included

• Classroom pedagogy
• Competence of teaching consultants and teaching assistants
• Assessment methods
• Teaching students with diverse backgrounds in the same courses
• Organization of tutorials, space and student grouping

Some of the problems are particularly pertinent to the S&TL AOI, since many teachers in science and engineering are relatively inexperienced with running tutorials. A workshop on facilitating tutorials was organized by the PI, but it is the imperative for faculties to work with the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning to organize workshops on conducting tutorials for their Teaching Assistants in the future. Through the study, good practices, issues of concerns based on students’ perceptions, tutors’ perceptions and lesson observations were identified. Suggestions and recommendations regarding to the concerned issues were also made.

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