Issue 14, December 2015

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.


Roundtable Teaching and Learning: Enhancing Learning in an Increasingly Multicultural Classroom


In this roundtable session on 24 November, with Dr Robert Wright as the facilitator, three distinguished panelists, Dr Gail Forey (ENGL), Prof. Cathy Hsu (SHTM) and Mr Anthony Lok (MM), were invited to share their insights on how to enhance learning in an increasingly multicultural classroom. Participants commented that in a multicultural classroom teachers should be aware of the cultural differences and open-minded in their teaching. They should plan ahead and be well-prepared for the class. This roundtable session facilitated discussions and reflections that gave participants powerful insights on improving their teaching and professional development.

This activity was co-organized by Community of Practice (CoP) on Developing, Recognising and Rewarding Excellent Teaching, EDC and Centre STARS.
  




Becoming a Scholarly Teacher


On 20 and 27 November, Dr Josie Csete conducted two workshops entitled "Becoming a Scholarly Teacher". This workshop series was designed to provide an overview of the growing field of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The following topic areas were addressed across the series of workshops accompanied by hands-on activities:

(1) Scholarship in Higher Education
(2) Planning an SoTL study
(3) Library resources and research skills for SoTL
(4) Negotiating publication of the outcomes of your SoTL study

This series provided opportunities for participants to develop new skills and meet colleagues interested in SoTL. The information presented and skills practiced were found useful for teachers interested in reflecting on their own teaching (drawing on theory and evaluation data) and/or developing plans for small SoTL projects.

This activity was supported by EDC and CoP on Developing, Recognising and Rewarding Excellent Teaching.

  




How do Students Learn while Serving the Community through Engineering Projects?

The recipient of the 2015 University Grants Committee (UGC) Teaching Award, Prof. Kam-Tim Woo, delivered an inspiring talk on 11 November on how to engage students in serving the community through engineering projects. Prof. Woo shared his experience on organizing challenging engineering projects such as underwater robotics and mobile apps that could engage students to learn experientially as well as to serve the community with real impact.
Prof. Woo is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education of the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the founding Director of the Centre for Global & Community Engagement.

This talk was jointly organized by OSL, Service Learning CoP and EDC.

  




Mandatory Service-Learning: Do Students Learn from It?

Many educators argue against mandatory service-learning. In the seminar on 26 November, Dr Stephen Chan (OSL), Dr Grace Ngai (COMP) and Dr KP Kwan (OSL) shared the findings from a LTC evaluation project, “Institution-wide Evaluation of Credit-bearing Service Learning Subjects”, and the impact of PolyU’s mandatory service-learning requirement on student learning and development, particularly for the students who were initially less inclined and felt “compelled” to engage in service learning subjects. Findings showed that

(1) students as a whole did learn quite a lot from the mandatory SL requirement; 
(2) the less-inclined students learned almost as much as the more-inclined ones from SL; 
(3) quality of students’ learning experience of and, to some extent, their interests in the SL subjects or projects had a much stronger impact than their initial inclination on their learning and development from SL; and 
(4) most students, particularly those who initially adopted a negative or “passive acceptance” stance, reported a very positive change in their views about SL after completing the subjects.

This session was jointly organized by OSL, Service Learning CoP and EDC.
  




Preliminary Results of the Online Survey of Blackboard Usage

The Online Survey of Blackboard Usage was conducted from 7 August to 25 September this year, and the aim of the survey was to collect data from students and teaching staff about their experience in using Learn@PolyU in the academic year 2014/15. There were more than 1,300 valid responses, of which 1,113 were from students and 239 were from teaching staff. The preliminary results show that:

(1) 89.4% of the students and 81.2% of the teaching staff were satisfied with Blackboard (Learn@PolyU);
(2) Almost 70% of the students accessed Learn@PolyU at least once a day, over 90% of them agreed that the features of Learn@PolyU were easy to use;
(3) 78.6% of the students would like to have more subjects on Learn@PolyU;
(4) More than 70% of the teaching staff who participated in the survey agreed that Learn@PolyU has improved the communication with their students, while 65% agreed that Learn@PolyU has allowed them to try out different teaching approaches and learning activities.The full report will be available on the CoP website in due course.

As a token of appreciation, two iPad Mini4 are awarded to two participants (one student and one teaching staff) via lucky draw, and the lucky draw winners are Hui Man Fai from CEE and Leo P.H. Chan from SD, who will also join the next CoP meeting to share their user experience of Learn@PolyU. CoP on Using Blackboard LMS to Enhance Learning and Teaching would like to take this opportunity to thank all participants for their contribution.




International Conference on English Across the Curriculum 2015
Date: 14 - 15 December 2015
Venue: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Keynote Speakers: Prof. Terry Myers Zawacki, George Mason University, USA
Prof. Rainer Glaser, University of Missouri, USA
Dr Ursula Wingate, King’s College London, UK

As an extension of the CoP on Enhancing Students' English Abilities, Dr Julia Chen, the CoP facilitator received a UGC competitive Learning & Teaching fund to lead an inter-institution project on Professional Development in Enhancing English Across the Curriculum, and the project now is in effect. This December, an international conference on English Across the Curriculum will be held here in PolyU.

The International Conference on English Across the Curriculum 2015 is a two-day conference that aims to bring together academics from different disciplines and language teaching units to explore ways to enhance students’ English in discipline content subjects. For further information of the Conference, please click here.


  
 


PolyU Communities of Practice