Description

The Freshman Seminar will be a new subject in the new 4-Year curriculum. Upon the completion of this subject, students will be able to:
a) have general understanding of history of science and topics of modern science and technologies, such as, nanotechnology, sustainable energy, biotechnology, food safety and investment science;
b) generate innovate ideas and use different perspectives and creative solutions to tackle scientific problems;
c) command the basic communication and interpersonal skills in teamwork;
d) appreciate the basic concepts of entrepreneurship; and
e) develop a global outlook and passion for lifelong learning.

A variety of learning activities to help students achieve the above outcomes were developed: (1) Chair Professor Seminar; (2) Expert Seminar; (3) Industrial Visit; and (4) Group Project.

Chair Professor Seminar
Each of the three participating departments invited a Chair Professor/ Distinguishes Professor to give a seminar of his/ her expertise. The professors shared the students the recent development of the specific areas of their interests and introduce the field of applied sciences to the students.

Expert Seminar
Five expert seminars were organized. Through these seminars students learned how sciences are applied in the real world. These experts introduced to the students the entrepreneurship and commercialization at the seminars.

Industrial Visit
One industrial visit to the Shatin Sewage Treatment Plant was organized in Week 10.

Group Project
Students from different disciplines formed into different groups to work on their projects. At the end, every group had to submit a project report and give an oral presentation.
 

Evaluation and Comments

The learning activities were being piloted in 2011/12, observed and then evaluated. Issues and difficulties and follow-up actions have been summarized as follows:

Chair Professor Seminar
Students found the issues discussed at some of the seminars unsuitable for their level and difficult to understand. The Team will communicate and negotiate with the Professors to make the seminars more suitable to the students.

Expert Seminar
The guest speakers might find it difficult to run the seminar at an appropriate level for most of the students who did not have foundational knowledge of the topics. At the same time, students commented that the content of some of the seminars was too technical. In the future, it is planned to bring in five guest speakers who are outstanding figures in the fields of applied biology, chemistry, food safety, applied physics and applied mathematics to the seminars. Interaction between the experts and students will be promoted and a tutorial will be arranged before each seminar to prepare students for the seminar.

Industrial Visit
There was a difficulty in fixing a time for all students from different programmes for the visit. In addition, most industrial sites could not accommodate more than 50 people each time. Industrial visit will be made a supplementary component of the Freshman Seminar. The Team will try the best to organize at least 4 industrial visits at different time slots so that students can deliberately choose to join at least one of them.

Group Project
Some students commented that they did not like how the grouping was made. They found it difficult to work with the people they did not know well and they also hoped to have more project topics to choose from. To solve this issue, detailed guidelines will be provided for students to form groups by the topics that they are interested in. Students will be required to explore a specific topic that will enthuse them about applied sciences but not to show in-depth knowledge because that may not be realistic at the Freshman level. In the future, each student will be responsible for one aspect of the topic in the project. Tutorial sessions will be added for project supervisors to give more support to the students and to discuss in great detail with them any issues that they find difficult. The assessment weighting of the group project will be reduced to 50% from 70%.

Others
A self-learning package has been designed for students in the next semester. A list of TV programmes on science has been compiled and this list has been made available on the website and in the library. Students have to watch these programmes outside the classroom and write 2 term papers about the programmes they have watched. One of the papers has to be written about the programme related to the student’s own discipline while another one related to a topic of another applied science disciplines. Students will be required to illustrate their own ideas and problem-solving skills and be innovative.