Description

These materials are supplementary e-learning packages for different levels of students and facilitating teaching, learning and assessment of basic mathematics and statistics via the use of the university's Learning Management System (LEARN@PolyU) so as to meet specific challenges and needs in the provision of 4-year undergraduate curriculum. These e-Iearning materials include approximately 500 formative assessment questions to assist the students learning.

Evaluation

The e-Iearning materials on Calculus and Linear Algebra have been pilot tested for students in the first semester of 2011/2012 and materials on Statistics were tested during the second semester of 2011/2012. Two surveys were conducted among students taking the subjects and also among staff teaching those subjects in the first and second semester of 2012/2013. The response rates of the survey at the end of the first semester for students and staff were good at 40% and 57% respectively. However, similar surveys conducted at the end of the second semester were poor at only 7% and 27 % respectively. The poor response rates were probably due to the timing of the end of the semester.

According to feedback, most of the students agreed that the online materials were able to help them in learning and understanding the subject matters. Also, most of the teaching colleagues involved in the subjects agreed that the online materials were easy to use and could be accessed easily. Several adverse comments were also received in connection to the use of different browsers, poor display of graphics and downloading speed. Based on feedbacks from these comments, the online learning materials have been revised with a view of providing a better learning environment for the students. Summary reports of the two surveys are attached to this final report.

In order to share the experience gained from the project and also to allow more staff of AMA to use the e-Learning materials, two Departmental seminars and a PolyU-wide workshop were organized in August 2013. The Departmental Learning and Teaching Committee of AMA decided in early 2013 to make the three e-Learning packages available to students of all AMA subjects from September 2013.

In 2011, the project team had several sharing sessions with colleagues of ABCT and AP on the development of the blended learning project. This helped colleagues of these Departments to prepare their own blending learning project on the subject of multidisciplinary sciences.