Welcome to the e-bulletin of Communities of Practice (CoPs), where you will be able to catch up with our most updated events and information of the five CoPs in PolyU.

CoP-Academic Advising Funding was opened for application in February 2014. A number of excellent proposals were received and eight of them are being supported. These eight projects focusing on academic advising span from April to December 2014. For further information, please click here.

OGUR held a sharing session for academic advisors in collaboration with CoP on Academic Advising. It was well received by 35 participants. In the session, Dr. Sunny Sun (AF) shared how she effectively invited students and engaged them in academic advising and Dr. Alice Wong (SN) talked about her discussions with students during the advising sessions. Miss Yuhan Ye, a student of AF, also shared her first-hand experience in receiving academic advising.

To understand better about our 4-year degree students and to make more appropriate and context-specific plans for the development of academic advising, a survey of academic advising was conducted in two rounds.

In the first round, a total of 437 Year 2 students participated in the survey which was conducted from 23 September 2013 to 8 October 2013 on Blackboard. Results revealed that students expected academic advisors to help them with identifying academic, career and personal goals, provide advice on academic problems and prepare materials about programme of study, career aspect, scholarships and financial support.

The second round was conducted from 30 January to 26 March 2014 for Year 1 students. A total of 964 Year 1 students took part in the survey. The analysis of the results is in progress.

Developing, Recogising and Rewarding Excellent Teaching CoP invited Prof. Alan Lau Kin-tak (ME), the first PolyU UGC Teaching Award recipient, to offer a sharing session and an open forum on the topic of Building Excellence in Teaching on 28 January 2014. In this session, Prof. Lau emphasized that one of teacher's responsibilities is to provide a platform for students to see their potentials. His teaching approach goes beyond the conventional boundary of student learning from traditional classrooms to his "industry-engaged outcome-based education" approach which is able to create an inspiring and effective learning experience for students.

Developing, Recognising and Developing Excellent Teaching CoP and EDC organised the Video@PolyU Workshop Series of three workshops and one re-run workshop between February and April 2014. Prof. Iris Benzie (HTI), Mr. Ian Brown (EDC) and Mr. Anthony Ho (EDC) focused on how lectures could be made into effective videoclips and how the video clips could be used in different of ways to enhance and add flexibility to teaching and learning, for example, ‘flipping’ the classroom, building MOOCs and paving the way to successful blended and online delivery of content. During the workshops, a variety of online resources, such as Blackboard, iTunes, Khan Academy, TED Talks and Youtube were introduced to the audience.

On 21 March, Dr. Robert Wright (MM), co-facilitator of Developing, Recognising and Developing Excellent Teaching CoP, showcased his "Staying F.O.C.U.S.E.D. philosophy" to bring teaching and research together into the next level. As he commented, this approach stimulates higher level thinking from students and real managers when they are dealing with complicated unsolved issues, challenges and problems.

Dr. Julia Chen, Dr. Robert Yiu, Ms. Grace Lim, Prof. Winnie Cheng and Miss Anna Cheung, the leading team of CoP on Enhancing Students’ English Abilities presented a paper at the ELTU Conference in CUHK on 5 June 2014. The paper describes an approach used to help disciplinary academics emphasize the appropriate use of English in their subject intended learning outcomes and assessment rubrics in order to raise their students’ awareness of the importance of English language in effectively communicating disciplinary content. They have finished some collaborative projects with disciplinary academics, including the design of English language materials and activities that is suitable for the subject assignments, and the rewording of assignment rubrics so that ‘English language use’ or ‘communication of content’ carries a certain assessment weighting to ‘push and pull’ students to consult relevant English language resources when doing the assessment tasks.

Dr. Julia Chen, the facilitator of CoP on Enhancing Students’ English Abilities, and Dr. Esther Tong (HKCC, CoP member) co-presented a paper at the International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference in Minnesota, the USA. The paper reports how disciplinary teachers and English language teachers in her CoP have worked hand in hand to develop language-supportive assessment guides for students in an ‘English across the curriculum’ approach; and how the extra language resources developed by the English language centres in the PolyU and HKCC have helped disciplinary teachers to help their students acquire the English skills they need to master the genres in their disciplines.

On 9 May, Service-Learning CoP and EDC organised a workshop, “The Scholarship of Service-Learning: Researching and Publishing”, to explain different types of research in service learning. This workshop was well-received by 43 participants. Prof. Daniel Shek, Dr. Josie Csete and Dr. Stephen Chan introduced three types of publications, namely “Concepts”, “How to” and “Outcomes” with sample papers for demonstration. They also took this opportunity to encourage participants to attend an upcoming international conference “The Second Summit on University Social Responsibility cum International Conference on Service-Learning” hosted by PolyU in November 2014.

An on-site workshop in Cambodia sponsored by the CoP on Service-Learning was organised on 12-22 June 2014. Three teachers, Dr. Gilbert Chan (ABCT), Dr. Vincent Cho (MM) and Ms. Phyllis Pang (SN), spent an intensive and deeply rewarding time with experienced service-learning practitioners in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In the workshop, the three teachers observed the Service-Learning teams from COMP, SO and SHTM providing different services to various disadvantaged groups. They also participated in the reflection sessions, exchanged thoughts with the project leaders and met with the local NGO partners to understand their needs. This workshop helped them gain a better idea about overseas service learning projects and provided them with an opportunity to reflect on how to develop their own subjects with service learning component in the future. President Professor Timothy W. Tong also participated the Cambodia Service-Learning project.

Three consultation sessions were held between 25 and 27 June to help teachers write quality papers on service learning for the International Conference on Service-Learning to be held in November 2014. Teachers interested in submitting their papers came to the sessions, discussed ideas and received feedback from Dr. Josie Csete, the co-facilitator of Service-Learning CoP.

On 24 June, the Blackboard LMS CoP and EDC organised a seminar entitled MITx MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Participants were given an opportunity to explore parts of the MITx courses that were originally conducted in face-to-face courses. The seminar also looked at specific issues, e.g. the teaching and learning approach(es) embedded in the MITx MOOCs, different technological tools available and how they were used in the selected MOOC courses.

Mr. Peter Duffy (Associate Director of Centre for Collaborative Learning & Teaching, Victoria University) and Prof. Eric Tsui (facilitator of the Blackboard LMS CoP) delivered a seminar on 29 January to explore the issue of the rapidly expanding ecosystem of MOOCs. At the seminar, participants had an opportunity to identify key aspects of the design of a MOOC specific to their institutional contexts. PolyU's journey in the development of MOOC was also shared and turned into a webinar later by Prof. Tsui, accessible at http://158.132.103.175/temp/eric/mooc_journey_webinar/

Blackboard LMS CoP has established sub-communities with focus on four areas: Knowledge Sharing and Learning, Survey on the Usage of Learn@PolyU, Production of Webinars and Mini-MOOCs and Metrics for Evaluating the Outcomes of the Blackboard LMS CoP. Colleagues are welcome to join the sub-communities of their interest. For further details, please contact Leona Li.