Description

Two e-learning coursewares have been designed and built on the cloud storage space.

Personal Resilience Action Research Courseware

An assessment instrument for personal resilience was implemented with the aid of response ware in class. Personal resilience assessment data were collected, analyzed and discussed at the beginning of the semester. With the aid of response ware, students were able to respond to their own assessment results as well as other students' assessment data.

Community Resilience Action Research Courseware

Self learning materials including a wide range of video clips were uploaded to Blackboard. A community resilience action research courseware was built on the cloud storage which allowed online collaboration. Students were encouraged to upload their own work to the cloud storage space for sharing with other students. This collaborative environment enabled students to archive word documents, photographs, video and audio clips. It also allowed simultaenous editing or providing comments by more than one student at any point of time. In this project, students were asked to analyze how government departments contributed to the disaster resilience for the Hong Kong society and compared it to other parts of the world. Students were also asked to fofer capacity building plans to stregthen disaster resilience in the local community. As comments were solicited from all students, in working through these activities, they had taken the roles of both participants and research collaborator in the research process. As part of the formal assessment for the subject, students were required to present the resilience strengthening plan in clas.

These two course wares have nto been uploaded to Blackboard because the platform did not allow real-time online collaborative work when this project started. Therefore, it was put on the Google platform. Students were highly familiar with the use of Google Drive and they did not need instruction. The setback for using Google Drive was that spontaneous data could not be retrieved from the platform as it could be done on Blackboard.

Evaluation

Systematic evaluations had been carried out and measures included reflective journal and student feedback survey.

Reflective Journal

Each student was asked to submit a personal reflection to evaluate the impact of the action research learning experience. Overall, students felt they enjoyed the collaborative learning process. As some students were more knowledgeable on some aspects of disaster preparedness, they felt they could learn more from their classmates. Some students pointed out they learned to provide constructive comments rather than negative feedback because they had been instructed to do so. Besides, some students came to realize that good policies were crucial to community disaster resilience. Through their comparison of the situation in Hong Kong to other countries, they were aware of things that had been done well by the Hong Kong Government and ares that needed improvements. Some pointed out they felt they were lucky being residents in Hong Kong and they must be grateful for what they have. Furthermore, some students particularly highlighted the importance of disaster preparedness and mitigation rather than disaster response.

Student Feedback Survey

A specific student survey was conducted to collect students' opinions on the learning strategy. Feedback was solicted on three levels: personal, interpersonal and subject and overall comments. In general, the feedback was very positive. Most of the students agreed the learning strategies had helped them gain knowledge of the subject matter (100% agree or strongly disagree); and develop personally (100% agree or strongly agree) and interpersonally (100% agree or strongly agree) as an active learner and researchers. Table 1 shows the breakdown of the percentages. However, not all of them wanted to become a researcher (84% agree or strongly agree) or pursue disaster care as a career (48% agree of strongly agree). This is understandable because most of the students taking this subject were in their first or second year of study. Students also expressed that taking control of their own learning and collaboration with their peers were most useful. A few students suggested that some lectures could be put on Blackboard so that they could revise their work whenever necessary.

Observation of Student Performance

It was observed that students were very active in providing comments to other students during the class presentation. This would not be possible if they had never studied other students' work prior to the presentation. By creating a collaborative work space it allowed students to understand each other more and therefore were more well-prepared to offer feedback.

Recommendations

The two coursewares that have been built can be continuously used by subsequent cohort of students. However, as the sites for community disaster resilience and vulnerability assessment would not be the same, the framework can be adopted. It would even be better if these coursewares could be put on Blackboard so that spontaneous system data could be generated.

Using action research as a learning strategy should be encouraged. Some classroom teaching might be replaced by video- or audio-recorded lectures so that more time could be used for facilitating students from diffierent Faculties to work together. To meet this end, six online lectures on different types of disasters: avalanche, drought, earthquake, flooding, landslide, wildfire were produced and would be launched in the first semester of the 2015/16 academic year.