Experience Sharing
Stories on Developing On-line Course Materials
As a learning community, faculty members and instructors generously shared their experiences on using on-line learning and teaching tools to design and develop their course materials. Below are their stories grouped according to the Schools and academic services.
HKUST
- School of Science
- School of Engineering
- School of Business & Management
- School of Humanities & Social Science
- Language Centre
- Library
- Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching
Other Institutions
HKUST
School of Science
Dr Joanna Ho - Dept of Biochemistry
Dr Joanna Ho gave an account on the phases of development of the course BICH172/182 Biochemical Laboratory, a course in which she uses animations to illustrate abstract concepts. She highlighted the usefulness of preparing storyboards for creating animations.
Dr Ice Ko - Dept of Biology
Dr Ice Ko shared her experience in developing a fully on-line course for ESCE500 Introductory Environmental Chemistry and Microbiology. She described her learning experience of building the course and the attributes of web-based teaching, especially in cases where students heavily rely on the web environment for learning.
Mr Tsz Kit Yeung - Dept of Physics
Mr Tsz Kit Yeung gave an account on the multimedia development process of an on-line course PHYS007 Physical Phenomena in Everyday Life, that was aimed for non-physics major students, with Prof Tai Kai Ng and Ng’s colleagues. The presentation highlighted their encountered difficulties, solution designs, and the overall experience from the development process.
Prof Yu Fong Yen - Dept of Chemistry
Prof Yu Fong Yen shared experiences of developing thirty-one experimental video clips for two laboratory courses Synthetic Lab and Molecular Characterization. The video clips, currently archived in the Chemistry departmental website, are used to facilitate technicians’ demonstrations for students to review before and after the laboratory sessions.
School of Engineering
Mr To Chow - Dept of Computer Science
Mr To Chow looked at the development process of COMP102 Computer and Programming Fundamentals I, from another perspective that reflected his mixed feelings towards using technology such as teaching with online video lectures.
Mr Thomas Hu - Dept of Civil Engineering
Mr Thomas Hu shared his ideas and implementations of spreadsheet software and web technologies to deliver on-line quizzes testing students’ knowledge of Least Squares (LS) in the course of CIVL102 Surveying and Surveying Camp for first year students. The on-line quizzes were designed to generate random questions and to support automatic grading and such facilitation allows instructors more time to design a large pool of questions.
Prof Synnove Kekkenon-Moneta - Dept of Computer Science
Prof Synnove Moneta concluded that preparing an on-line course is demanding and time-consuming after giving a detailed account regarding her experience on planning and development of COMP101 Computing Fundamentals, a fully on-line course for first year students.
Prof Ting Chuen Pong - Dept of Computer Science
Prof Ting Chuen Pong introduced his project Cyber Classroom, which offered university courses to secondary students. He reflected the experience from different perspectives by recording and reporting the comments from some of the students.
School of Business & Management
Prof John Hulpke - Dept of Management of Organizations
Prof John Hulpke shared with us how he tried out different ways of teaching MGTO222 Business, Society and the Individual, followed by his perceptions of what worked and what not in the planning and development processes. Professor Hulpke has been selected as one of the 10 Best Lecturers Election winners in Fall 2000-2001.
Prof Vojislav Misic - Dept of Information & Systems Management
Prof Vojislav Misic shared his development expenience for ISMT337 Multimedia Applications Development in a presentation presented on the topic titled "I still can't print the notes - Some experiences from (experimental) online learning." Four ISMT third-year students enlivened his talk by sharing their views from the learners' perspectives.
Prof Joseph Salvacruz - Dept of Marketing
Prof Joseph Salvacruz shared his experience on using the web to teach large group and gave credits to WebCT in disseminating course information. Particularly for MARK112 Marketing Management, he stressed on the importance of analysing audiences' needs before starting course development.
Prof Louis Yau - Dept of Economics
Prof Louis Yau told the story of how he was inspired by the Do It Yourself (DIY) workshops held by the Instructional Development Unit of CELT and started his development on ECON112 Macroeconomics on his own.
School of Humanities & Social Science
Prof Greg Felker - Division of Social Science
Prof Greg Felker shared his experience on using on-line discussion to promote student learning. Based on the course contents and activities of SOSC 125 International Relations, he illustrated with the contents of his course the pedagogical value of dialogue among students. His presentation goes with a set of PowerPoint slides named "Motivating Dialogue".
Prof Min Zhang - Division of Humanities
Prof Min Zhang shared his views of the multifaceted paradigm shift, as a result of Information Technology, in higher education and its impact on humanities curriculum. He described from his experience, the challenges and opportunities of adopting software technologies to help multi-disciplinary students to learn individually and collaboratively in his linguistics course HUMA201 Metaphors in English and Chinese.
Language Centre
Ms Elsie Christopher - Language Centre
Ms Elsie Christopher introduced a website, Writing and Speaking Through the Curriculum, developed by her teaching team and CELT. She sees the site as a solution for improving the English standard of Hong Kong students. She explained the special features of the site and the way it helps Business students to attain better writing skills.
Ms Martha Lam - Language Centre
Ms Martha Lam shared her planning and development experience of the on-line version of LANG 306 English for Engineering Management II: Job Seeking Module that was delivered in Winter 2000. She saw her experience as a career development process. Her presentation goes with a set of PowerPoint slides named "From textbooks to e-learning".
Ms Pansy Lam - Language Centre
Together with Ms Martha Lam, Ms Pansy Lam shared the evaluation of students' learning experience for LANG306 English for Engineering Management II: Job Seeking Module, an on-line course delivered in Winter 2000. She emphasized on students' awareness of course objectives. Her presentation goes with a set of PowerPoint slides named "The Real Challenge: Interview Skills in English".
Dr John Milton - Language Centre
Dr John Milton created a series of interactive learning activities for an on-line life long learning course Workplace English, which offers lessons and practices of reading, writing and speaking skills through role-playing. He concluded that using the web and multimedia technologies to learn appeared to benefit both the instructors and students.
Mr Nick Noakes - Language Centre
Mr Nick Noakes shared his learning about Empowering Online ESL Learners. His presentation followed an action research cycle involving the design, implementation and evaluation of a course in advanced English reading and writing skills for final-year SBM undergraduates.
Mr Nick Noakes - Language Centre
Mr Nick Noakes shared his experience of developing the course, Facilitating Learning Online (FLO). He discussed with us the design rationale of the course with emphasis on participant's commitment: "The important lesson is they have to find the time to discover and play with networked learning tools." The presentation goes with a set of PowerPoint slides named "Small Cascades".
Library
Mr Sam Chu - Library
Mr Sam Chu shared with us how the Library developed its Information Literacy Tutorial, an on-line course offering to all first year undergraduates, by conducting formative evaluations with current students in the development process.
Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching
Mrs Mei Fang - Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching
Mrs Mei Fang highlighted some potential opportunities and dilemmas for on-line learning and teaching arising from content development and learning and teaching in her paper titled No Pain, No Gain: Opportunities and Dilemmas in Online Learning Teaching. Suggestions are recommended to minimize the dilemmas, with the aim of helping lecturers and administrators be more aware and responsive to their challenges.
Mr Tak Ha - Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching
Mr Tak Ha reported on the major findings collected from surveys and interviews with students on their on-line learning experiences in his paper titled Students' Views about their Experiences of Learning Online. His preliminary findings show that students generally found WebCT user-friendly and easy to use, quizzes and bulletin boards useful. Among those who enrolled in courses with significant online components, more of them preferred online learning. It was also found that face-to-face lectures are important to students in ways we probably are not aware of.
Miss Wanze Li - Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching
Miss Wanze Li discussed the important roles of images in facilitating learning and teaching in her paper titled A Single Picture is Worth a Thousand Words: The Effects of Images on Online Learning Content. With examples extracted from the on-line courses jointly developed by CELT and instructors in HKUST, she demonstrated how visual elements could be added to enhance the learning contexts especially for online dissemination.
PaperMiss Barbara Tam - Center for Enhanced Learning & Teaching
Miss Barbara Tam investigated some of the challenges faced by people who develop on-line learning and teaching textural materials in her paper titled The Challenges of and Guidelines for Enhancing the Readability of Online Learning Content. She concluded her discussion by giving some guidelines and dos-and-don’ts on improving readability of contents in a hypertext environment.
Other Institutions
Dr Mike Keppell - The Hong Kong Institute of Education
Dr Mike Keppell from the Hong Kong Institute of Education, gave a presentation on ‘Conceptualizing and Designing Multimedia and Online Modules’ discussing the strategies to assist the instructional designers and subject matter expects to develop multimedia and on-line contents with a completed project ‘Virtual Dentistry Room’.
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