SBM

Knowledge Transfer and Reuse in Group Project Work

Project Overview
Project Title	Knowledge Transfer and Reuse in Group Project Work
Project Leader	Prof James Kwok
School / Dept	SBM / ISMT
Project Duration	Aug 2002 - Sept 2003
Project Description	This project attempted to improve the effectiveness of group learning. It addressed the questions: how does knowledge sharing and reuse happen in a small group? Is the decentralized knowledge reuse more favourable and useful for group members compared with the centralized knowledge reuse approach? What drives knowledge sharing and reuse effectively? This project applied the knowledge reuse theory and the knowledge management tools to support group learning. A study on the group members’ behaviour in knowledge sharing and reuse was conducted. It looked into the sociopsychological factors that encouraged and motivated them to work in knowledge management environment. The captured information was accessible and reusable by other students. This project had implications for all courses using groupwork and team projects.
Project Outcome	A set of questionnaire was designed to test the students’ perception concerning knowledge sharing based on their experience acquired in group projects. The questionnaire consisted of two parts. In the first part, there were eight factors as items, based on past relevant studies, which are perceived critical to knowledge sharing, including knowledge friendly culture, motivational practices, multiple available channels, leader supportiveness, trust, pre-existing relationship, common language and level of technology. In the second part, four items were included, which are Email, Knowledge repository, Face-to-face (F2F) meeting and Formal seminar. It was found that building trusting relationships between individuals was extremely critical for successful knowledge sharing among them, and on the other hand, the level of technology was least concerned during the process of knowledge sharing. Also, Email and F2F meeting were more frequently used to share knowledge with others; knowledge repository and formal seminar, on the other hand, were less popular. A report on the above findings was composed and presented in: i) Kwok, S.H. and Gao, S."Knowledge Sharing Community in P2P Network: A Study of Motivational Perspective" Journal of Knowledge Management (JKM) (2004 forthcoming) and ii) Kwok, S.H. and Gao, S. "Knowledge Sharing Community in P2P Network and its Application Features: A Study of Motivation Perspective". Proceedings of the Pacific-Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS2003). Adelaide, Australia, 2003.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

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Intercultural Skills Development among HKUST Business School Undergraduate: A Longitudinal Investigation

Project Overview
Project Title	Intercultural Skills Development among HKUST Business School Undergraduate: A Longitudinal Investigation
Project Leader	Prof Melody Manchi Chao and Prof Larry Jiing-Lih Farh
School / Dept	SBM / MGMT
Project Duration	Jun 2010 - Jun 2012
Project Description	It was a longitudinal study that aimed at: Identifying and validating assessment tools for measuring students' multicultural skills Documenting undergraduates' intercultural experiences and the development of their multicultural skills Identifying factors (e.g., activities or experiences) that are conducive to the development of student's multicultural skills Providing suggestions to improve the outcome based education program.
Project Outcome	A longitudinal study was conducted to examine how students' university experiences contribute to the development of their multicultural ability, as well as their career success upon graduation. Through the longitudinal study, it was found that the exchange program is effective in enhancing the intercultural skills and fostering more positive attitudes towards minority group. Factors that could potentially facilitate students' learning were also identified so as to harvest the most out of their exchange experiences.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report Final Report Project-end Review by Project Leader
Adaptation	Full Project

Establishing an Assessment Reporting System for Undergraduate Programs

Project Overview
Project Title	Establishing an Assessment Reporting System for Undergraduate Programs
Project Leader	Prof Mike So
School / Dept	SBM / ISOM
Project Duration	Jan 2009 - Feb 2013
Project Description	This is a program-level project that aims at developing a new assessment and reporting system for the new program - Risk Management and Business Intelligence (RMBI) - to understand individual students' strengths and weaknesses as well as to keep track how program intended learning outcomes achieved throughout the course study. The learning outcomes for the RMBI Program, including communication skills, integration of knowledge; teamwork and cooperation; creativity and critical thinking; and IT proficiency.
Project Outcome	A basic empirical analysis on the data collected from the assessment questionnaire was conducted. Particular focus is on critical thinking, the use of information and language skill. Some interesting findings were revealed from the analysis. They are: The surveyed students on average wrote 3.5 pages for their English assignments per week. This may be insufficient for maintaining a high writing standard. On average, the surveyed students met their instructors/ TAs once per month, indicating that students may not be very active in seeking academic advice. Students were familiar with searching inforamtion for their assignments on the internet but not in the library. This may suggest that students overlook or underestimate the value of the library. The university may organize seminars or classes to let students know more about resources available in the library. After the first-level analysis, statistical models linking the degree of the involvement of the students in various generic-skill learning activities in their daily life to different performance measures were obtained. Summary results are: Taking committee position has dominant negative effect on the academic performance of the students. Frequently using application software is not a sign of positive influence on the critical-thinking proficiency of the students. In fact, the effect from frequently using application software to critical-thinking proficiency is negative. Critical-thinking proficiency is positively related to the frequency of searching information from different sources. Hence instructors may consider emphasizing and encouraging students to conduct more "critical" information search for their assignments. Students in general pay inadequate effort in reading newspapers or discussing current controversial issues. In the project, an assessment form was designed to let students know their generic skill competencies and to learn which areas they can improve. Sharing sessions were held to explain to students how to use and interpret the assessment form. Structural equation models were developed to understand the relationship between students' learning behaviors and their generic skill proficiency.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Third \| Final Report Project-end Review by Project Leader
Adaptation	Full Project

A Learning-by-Example Learning Module for Programming Courses

Project Overview
Project Title	A Learning-by-Example Learning Module for Programming Courses
Project Leader	Prof James Kwok
School / Dept	SBM / ISOM
Project Duration	Dec 2006 - May 2009
Project Description	The objectives of this project are: 1. To develop an online learning module of LMES for business school students to enable them to learn their first programming language in a more effective way by means of learning-by-example 2. To help students develop habits of peer-learning and self-directed learning 3. To enable and facilitate program sharing and peer-learning 4. To provide an online compiler (adopted from another CELT project) for students to evaluate their programs online.
Project Outcome	An online learning module (online forum with specified searching and polling function) incorporated with the ASP Editor were developed. A reference link gathering available online resources for learning programming language was also provided in the course websites. Project was implemented in ISMT223 (Fall 07-08) and ISMT535 (Spring 07-08). Students were encouraged to share their example codes via discussion forum and practice using the ASP Editor to learn VBScript in class and after class. One assignment using example code was designed in ISMT223. Group discussion (within group members) and project discussion (for all students) via online forum were designed in one assignment to promote peer learning in ISMT353. Students learnt how to learn programming languages through online tutorials and resources and how to document their sharable programs. They also learnt to understand the way of learning by examples through this module.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Third \| Forth \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

Assessment Strategies in Problem-based Learning

Project Overview
Project Title	Assessment Strategies in Problem-based Learning
Project Leader	Prof Mike So
School / Dept	SBM / ISMT
Project Duration	Nov 2006 - Oct 2007
Project Description	The project developed assessment strategies to align effectively teaching methods and learning outcomes to assessment in problem-based learning.
Project Outcome	This project developed a set of effective assessment strategies for problem-based learning (PBL) activities (for a small class teaching - less than 50 students - and not limited to business and finance domains) to align effective teaching methods and learning outcomes. It aimed at establishing a benchmarking of assessment strategy for such students-centered learning activities. In-class PBL activities: Role-play activities include students' presentation, group discussion and debate and essay report. Students will be assessed by lecturers' observation from the aspects of innovative and feasible solutions, critical thinking, discussion and presentation techniques. Authentic business projects: Commitment contract sign-up (Completeness of the Business Project and Confidentiality of Information) is proposed. Students who cannot fulfill this commitment may subject to penalize on grade deduction in this course. One copy is kept by students. Incentive to students: Students are encouraged to ask for a reference letter from the company at the end of the project. Regular meeting with students and regular progress reports are required to keep track the students' progress. Any problem will be discovered at the early stage and teachers could provide immediately support to students. An interim meeting with clients to collect project comments. Peer assessment (no advance notice is given to students) is arranged in examination session.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

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Stimulating Students' Interest in Business Subjects Through Problem-Based Learning

Project Overview
Project Title	Stimulating Students' Interest in Business Subjects Through Problem-Based Learning
Project Leader	Prof Mike So
School / Dept	SBM / ISMT
Project Duration	Nov 2005 - Aug 2006
Project Description	Many students learn business subjects superficially. They only memorize what they have learnt and rarely think how their knowledge can be applied. Moreover, when they touch on new, fast-growing areas that are not clearly defined in books/articles, they seldom do research on the new areas and develop their knowledge base. Problem-based learning (PBL) can help solve the above problems. It is a teaching mode that requires thinking, learning, sharing and applying to account through selected hot and related topics. This allows students to learn interactively and deeply and in turn stimulating their interest in studying business subjects.
Project Outcome	There are three Problems –Based learning (PBL) activities held in this project. According to our questionnaire surveys and focus group interview, most students feel that PBLactivities can improve their independent thinking. They feel that they have deeper understandingof the subject from the activities. In addition, students think that the activities are good in thesense that they can form groups and learn from each other. They learnt communication skills andcompromising with group mates. For activity one - Group Discussion, besides learning from the interaction between group mates,students think that the brainstorming experience from the discussion is good. They can also learnother students’ way of thinking as students from different academic backgrounds are assigned toa group. For activity two - Topic Presentation, students think that the topic presentation is useful. During the activity topic presentation, they are comfortable with group works and the communication among group mates is good. However, some students think that some topics are too hard for this course. Sometimes they found that the topics are too broad that they have not enough time for searching information or doing in-depth analysis on the topic. For activity three – Business Project, they found that participating in company projects isa goodlearning experience. Besides learning how to apply what they have learnt from lectures, they gotmore familiar with the risk management industry and business operations. They also learn how totest the assumptions of a method or amodel. They think they can learn more from the companyprojects than the group discussion or topic presentation because the company projects involvemore difficult tasks. However, they think that the time allowed may be too short. Some studentsalso worried about having meeting with the clients. In short, they agreed that cooperation andenthusiasm are important in participating in the company projects. Most of them give a highrating to the course as practical experience, satisfaction and success can all be achieved.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

Developing Business Case Studies on Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions in China

Project Overview
Project Title	Developing Business Case Studies on Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions in China
Project Leader	Prof Vidhan K. Goyal
School / Dept	SBM / FINA
Project Duration	Nov 2005 - May 2008
Project Description	Business school teaching becomes heavily case-based. Existing cases available through Harvard Business School Publishing and the European Case Clearing House focus mostly on the US and European firms. Business situations faced by Chinese managers or students working in the Mainland often differ quite significantly from those in Europe or the US. The Asian Case Research Center has started to develop some Asian cases but only a few of them focus on finance. Asian cases on cross-border mergers and acquisition transactions are almost non-existent. The objective of this project is to develop two high quality business cases revolving around recent cross-border mergers and acquisition transactions in China. This will greatly enhance student learning as they will be able to analyse business problems that reflect local context and institutions.
Project Outcome	We researched and wrote a case study and a teaching note that can be used in corporate finance courses at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. The case describing a recent cross-border acquisition by a Chinese company and focuses on valuation and cross-country acquisition issues. The main objective of project was to contribute to the teaching material that can be used by instructors in Asia and to write a case on a recent Asian cross-border transaction that has local context and that raises issues that are of concern to Asian firms. The first case "Lenovo: The Acquisition of IBM's PC Business" was tested in two sections of FINA535 Strategic Finance and Value Creation (with total enrollment of 78 MBA students) in the spring semester 2008. We asked students to complete a group analysis of the case before coming to the class. We then spent a whole class period discussing the case as would be done in a case session. The CELT staff observed the case discussion and complete a survey form to obtain feedback on various aspects of the case and the discussion that took place in class. The comments and views of participants obtained were helpful in revising the case. A second case based on the restructuring of a Hong Kong company has been planned. The tentative title of the case is "Chevalier iTech: Restructuring" and it is currently in progress.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Third \| Forth \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

Design and Development of LMES-Based Course Web Sites for IT Courses

Project Overview
Project Title	Design and Development of LMES-Based Course Web Sites for IT Courses
Project Leader	Prof James Kwok
School / Dept	SBM / ISMT
Project Duration	Oct 2005 - May 2008
Project Description	The project is closely related to Learning Management and Evaluation System (LMES). The major teaching and learning issues include understanding: feasibility and applicability of LMES for IT-related courses, such as programming courses experience of designing and developing IT-related course websites with LMES users’ experience of using LMES
Project Outcome	The ASP Editor (add-on module in LMES) was developed and specially designed as a learning tool for IT-related courses. Project was implemented in ISMT223 (Fall 06-07) and ISMT535 (Spring 06-07). The ASP Editor was used in class to demonstrate and compile VB programs. The results of the VB programs will be displayed immediately after the program execution. Students were encouraged to make use the tool to learn VB scripts in class and after class.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Third \| Forth \| Fifth \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

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