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.

This knowledge exchange forum featured short presentations by representatives from MTR Corporation, China Light & Power (CLP), Hong Kong Police, Huawei, and PolyU, which have established their own CoPs. These representatives gathered together to share their experiences on how to cultivate a CoP to enhance knowledge sharing, learning and other purposes. More than 70 participants attended the forum and discussed the establishment of their CoPs, the purposes that they served, the nurturing progress of these CoPs, and the critical factors of succeeding in and sustaining the impact of CoPs.

You may download the presenters' PowerPoint slides at http://www.polyu.edu.hk/CoP/events_galleries.php

The “Introduction to Academic Advising” e-learning course was launched on 15 September 2014. A Certificate of Completion was issued to participants who completed 70% or above of the course and the evaluation form. This course is open to all academic staff. If you wish to enroll in this course, please contact Bonnie Chim by email (bonnie.chim@polyu.edu.hk) or telephone at 3400 8240.

Our eight funded projects have made some major progress.

In November, Dr. K.L. Yick and Dr. Joanne Yip from the Institute of Textiles & Clothing (ITC) held an Academic Advising event on 3 November to brief Year 1 students on academic advising mechanism and services. Ms. Irene Cheng, Senior Academic Counsellor from the Office of General University Requirements (OGUR), was invited to introduce OGUR to the student in the event. Some senior year students were also invited to chat with Year 1 students and share their experience gained in the learning activities.

On 24 November 2014, Dr. Y. M. Tang, Prof. C. Y. Tang and Dr. Gary Tsui from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) invited graduates of the Product Engineering with Marketing (PEM) programme to share with the audience their views towards the Hong Kong industries and professional development path. Meanwhile, a group of final year students shared their work-integrated education (WIE) experience with the audience.

For further information, please visit http://www.polyu.edu.hk/CoP/academic_advising/showcase.php.

On 25 November, senior management personnel of three local big companies came to PolyU to share their insights on the question of "What do employers want from our students?". They were Mr. Orpheus Choy (Managing Director of ONE Concept Group), Ms. Virginia Choi (Managing Director of Tamty McGill Consultants International Ltd) and Mr. David Li (Vice President of Human Resources and Customer Services in New World Telecommunication Ltd.) They shared with the participants the problems of and their expectations on the attitudes of their employees. At the end of the activity, it was concluded that having a good working attitude and being responsible, passionate, patient and highly self-discipline are key elements for a successful career.

"What will it take to educate the next generation of thought-leaders for a complicated world?" This 6 weeks exhibition (1 Dec 2014 -16 Jan 2015), generously hosted in our library, centres around this burning question. It is an important question in the midst of an ever changing fast paced world filled with contradictions, ambiguity, uncertainty, increasing competing demands and immense opportunities. As you enter the library, you will see 11 columns at various locations showcasing answers to this burning question from key stakeholders of PolyU (teachers, researchers, administrators and industry leaders) and from international scholars from leading universities around the world.

Please visit as many of these exhibition columns as you can, and take a moment to pause and reflect on the answers. At the end of three weeks, we will post a fresh set of answers for your contemplation. Students are also encouraged to provide their answers to this burning question by visiting the following website: http://goo.gl/forms/KqOWkPX7XZ (the first 80 thought-provoking replies will each receive a $50 cash coupon from Habitu Cafe).

We believe this exhibition has the power to captivate the imagination and inspire us all to work together to help make this world a better place.

Please go to this website for more details: http://www.polyu.edu.hk/CoP/excellent_teaching/exhibition.php

The Developing, Recognising and Rewarding Excellent Teaching CoP and the Working Group on Developing Campus Facilities and Environment for Learning and Teaching are now inviting suggestions for ‘high visibility’ signs for ‘Roll of Honour’ board, which is one of the major initiatives to recognise our excellent teachers and those who have made an outstanding contribution to Learning and Teaching at PolyU.

The CoP team on Enhancing Students’ English Abilities successfully received an additional project grant from the UGC to extend the CoP to CUHK, HKUST and CityU. This inter-institution project team, led by PolyU (PI: Dr. Julia Chen, ELC) organised a one-day Symposium on Enhancing English Across the Curriculum on Friday 5 December, 2014. Over 100 colleagues from 11 post-secondary institutions in Hong Kong registered for the event, which was the first sector-wide symposium on this topic ever organised in Hong Kong for a post-secondary/tertiary audience. Keynote speakers included Prof. Oliver Meyer (Germany) and Ms. Sally Mitchell (UK). Three local academics were also invited to share their views and experiences of English across the Curriculum: Prof. Shehkar Kumta (CUHK, Medicine), Prof. Jason Choi (PolyU, ITC) and Dr. Prakash Metaparti (PolyU, LMS).

Do you need to develop a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on edX or find out more about creating your own SPOC (Small Private Online Course)? Would you like to know what makes an effective MOOC? This community is established to help you find out more about MOOCs and SPOCs. You will find plenty of resources and hopefully learn the essential skills to create your own online courses on edX and become familiar with the edX course authorware, Studio. Two online discussion forums have been created to help you share and exchange ideas. 

Please search "MOOC" in the "Browse Organization catalog". You will need to enroll in this community (organisation ID: EDC_MOOC) in order to access the resources.

Two members of the Blackboard LMS CoP, Dr. Kevin Chan (APSS) and Mr. Ian Brown (EDC) as part of the educational development team from PolyU were invited to present at this year’s annual Chinese Higher Education Development Network (CHED) Conference, hosted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in Shanghai (14 – 16 November 2014). The CHED Network is a non-government organisation committed to supporting and promoting educational development amongst member universities, as well as improving the teaching and learning quality throughout Chinese higher education. The Network features major universities in mainland including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, and Shanghai Jiaotong University, as well as partnering institutions from Hong Kong, including the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The PolyU team presentation, entitled Mobile learning in large classes – The Hong Kong Polytechnic University “Clickers@PolyU”, drew in an enthusiastic audience of around 40 academics. The presentation revealed the vibrant and synergetic partnership between the Education Development Centre (EDC) and the Department of Applied Social Sciences (APSS) in developing active learning strategies with mobile devices and LMS integration. The collaboration leveraged mobile technology to transform large classes into an interactive learning environment and transformed into an institution-wide movement towards leveraging mobile technology to promote active learning.