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.

A meeting of core members of Academic Advising CoP was held on 18 September. The meeting focused on several issues: the development and progress of the Introduction to Academic Advising e-learning course; the Academic Advising surveys for year 2 and year 1 students; Academic Advising Funding activities; and training activities during this academic year. At the meeting, the core members shared their precious experience in academic advising in their schools/departments and valuable ideas about the future development of the project. If you are interested to become a CoP member, please click here to fill in the application form or simply contact Bonnie Chim by email (bonnie.chim@polyu.edu.hk) or telephone at 3400 8240.

The "Introduction to Academic Advising" e-learning course was launched on 15 September. Around 480 academic advisors and programme leaders were invited to participate. This e-learning course introduces the basic concepts of academic advising, including its values, goals, theories and practice, to academic staff member who act as academic advisor or will take up the role. A Certificate of Completion will be issued to participants who have completed at least 70% of the course and the evaluation form. If you wish to participate in the course, please contact Bonnie Chim by email (bonnie.chim@polyu.edu.hk) or telephone at 3400 8240.

Our eight funded projects have commenced to promote quality academic advising in their Schools/Departments since April this year. In order to welcome our freshmen and promote academic advising at PolyU, five project teams organised an orientation/workshop/sharing session for their freshmen and academic advisors in August and September.

Two project teams planned to publish videos to promote academic advising in their Schools/Departments. Dr Zenobia Chan and her project team members have published a video to promote their Student Academic Advising system in the School of Nursing. This video also serves as an e-learning resource for both academic advisors and freshmen. A group of year 1 students shared their experience of how their Student Academic Advisors assisted them in adapting to the university life.

Dr Sunny Sun and her project team members have published a book "e-Handbook for Academic Advising (AF)" for the School of Accounting and Finance, in which academic advisors can find information related to general understanding of Academic Advising, program information, academic issues such as Cluster Area Requirement (CAR), service learning subjects, opting for minor study programme, GPA calculation, honour classification, Work-Integrated-Education and career planning, overseas exchange, recommendation for extra-curricular activities and handling students with difficulties. For further information, please visit  http://www.polyu.edu.hk/CoP/academic_advising/showcase.php.

More workshops will be conducted by different departments in the coming months. For further information, please click here.

The first Roundtable Teaching and Learning was held successfully on 30 September. With the lead of Robert Wright (MM), the co-facilitator of the Developing, Recognising and Rewarding Excellent Teaching CoP, three panelists Dr. Basak Denizci Guillet (SHTM), Prof. Huang Xu (MM) and Prof. Bob McKercher (SHTM) came and shared their experiences to address the theme "Researchers hooked on Teaching, Teachers hooked on Research". All of them agreed that doing literature review for their research helped them prepare their lecture notes, and adaptation of local examples is important to connect with students. The workshop was appreciated by the participants who commented that they benefited from the insights on how to motivate students to learn.

The Roundtable Teaching and Learning series is organised by Community of Practice (CoP) on Developing, Recognising and Rewarding Excellent Teaching, in cooperation with Pao Yue-kong Library, Educational Development Centre and Student Affairs Office.

On behalf of the CoP on Developing, Recognising and Rewarding Excellent Teaching, Robert Wright (MM), the co-facilitator of this CoP approached more than 30 key stakeholders of the PolyU education system (teachers, researchers, administrators, including business leaders) to answer a burning question on video: “What will it take to educate the next generation of thought-leaders for a complicated world?”

Their replies have something important to say about our craft as educators. The CoP is confident that the collective thoughts and efforts in this regard will indeed give reason for pause and reflection in making us all better in what educators do.

The CoP would like to extend heartfelt thanks to all interviewees for taking the time to help make this world a better place.

For details, please visit this website http://www.polyu.edu.hk/CoP/excellent_teaching/oneminutevideo.php

PolyU, in collaboration with other universities over the world will host “The Second University Social Responsibility Summit cum Inaugural International Service-Learning Conference” on 19-21 November in PolyU and Hotel Icon. In the Summit, senior management from universities around the world will discuss broad issues of social responsibility. The Summit will be followed by the inaugural International Conference on Service-Learning which will focus on the research, scholarship and practice of service-learning.

For details, please visit this website http://www.osl.polyu.edu.hk/usrsl2014/.

Supported by the Member Development Fund, Mr. Ian Brown, one of the Blackboard LMS CoP members attended a training programme on edX at MIT. Around 20 educationalists from different parts of the world attended the 2-day edX training programme – also known as Course Author Onboarding. Participants included academics, learning designers, project managers, and administrators.

The training started with several hours of pre-work before the in-person workshop kicked off at the edX HQ. The objective of the training was to provide the skills and tools necessary to begin designing, developing, and delivering courses on edX. Major areas covered included designing and developing MOOCs, the edX platform and components, media best practices, marketing and administering MOOCs.

The emphasis of the in-person training was to have an overview of how edX works and interacts with fellow educationalists involved in MOOC development as well as engaging with edX trainers, project managers, and the CEO of edX, Anant Agarwal.

The Knowledge Cafe Session on e-Learning was held on 25 September. A number of 19 participants were involved in a discussion on the question "How do you see technology can support your teaching and learning activities at PolyU?". Issues discussed included personalised learning, reasons for turning teaching online, challenges of e-learning at PolyU, problems and perfect ways of using technology in teaching and learning, supports and resources needed from the university to develop e-learning, etc.

Date:	13 October (Mon)
Time:	12:30-2:00pm
Venue:	TU616

The Corpus of Research Articles (CRA) is a large collection of research articles collected from 39 disciplines taught in PolyU, with a built-in computer software ConcGramOnline©. This workshop describes different types of searches to find out and compare the words and grammar that are specific to different sections, for example, Introductions, Literature Reviews, Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, Recommendations, and Applications, across the 39 disciplines. Please click here to register.