Technology in Teaching

An Interactive Software Tool for the Design of Pharmaceutical Products and Processes

Project Overview
Project Title	An Interactive Software Tool for the Design of Pharmaceutical Products and Processes
Project Leader	Prof Ka Ming Ng
School / Dept	SENG / CENG
Project Duration	Jan 2004 - Jun 2005
Project Description	Chemical engineering students should gain experience in design and development of the pharmaceutical processes and products. But the design procedure involves many calculations that may stifle creative thinking. To facilitate teaching and learning, this project aimed to develop software to integrate and simulate the design of unit operations, the complete process and dosage form. Students focused on choosing product attributes and manipulating the operating conditions; hence optimizing the product quality; production, capital and labour cost. The tool also allowed them to solve realistic problems and gain experience in product-centred pharmaceutical engineering in an interactive, virtual environment.
Project Outcome	The ProWare® was rewritten using another programming language, C++. It was named as “Pharmaceutical Products and Processes Simulation System (P3S2)”. P3S2 had a totally new theme of graphic user interfaces. Unit operations of reactions, separations, solids processing and final dosage forms in pharmaceutical processes were incorporated. It could simulate a complete pharmaceutical process and was more powerful and user-friendly than the previous version. Together with the source code of P3S2, a user guide and a design document were prepared. In addition, an in-class demonstration of this software was carried out in one of the lectures of CENG 367 – Pharmaceutical Engineering. Students tested the tool and used it to solve two homework problems. An evaluation regarding the improvement in teaching and learning and user-friendliness of the software was conducted.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

Dynamic Interactive Software to Enhance Understanding of Animal Cell Metabolism For Recombinant Protein Production

Project Overview
Project Title	Dynamic Interactive Software to Enhance Understanding of Animal Cell Metabolism For Recombinant Protein Production
Project Leader	Prof John Barford
School / Dept	SENG / CENG
Project Duration	Sept 2003 - Jun 2006
Project Description	Animal cells play an important role in producing high value, recombinant protein products. They include many different cell types and bioreactors. The ability to compare these cells and cultivation methods results in a fruitful learning experience. This project developed dynamic interactive software that described production of recombinant protein products from animal cells. It allowed students to work out the effect of varying uptake rates of major substrates and nutrients, and the impact these had on internal metabolism and the resultant protein based end products. In addition, variations in different operating conditions (batch, fed-batch and continuous cultivation) and their impact on product yields and production rates could be examined in detail.
Project Outcome	An existing Fortran code was successfully transferred to a different interface based ob VB Excel. A beta version was evaluated by CENG students in CENG361 in Spring 2005.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Third \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

To Develop a HAZOP Study Teaching Module

Project Overview
Project Title	To Develop a HAZOP Study Teaching Module
Project Leader	Prof Gordon McKay
School / Dept	SENG / CENG
Project Duration	Mar 2004 - Jan 2005
Project Description	This project aimed to develop a new Hazards and Operability (HAZOP) teaching module tailored to undergraduate teaching. In this way, students could work in a multidisciplinary team in a simulated office context. It also encouraged their communication, systematic thinking and problem-solving skills.
Project Outcome	Developed Animated HAZOP Software Package. Developed the course materials for the new teaching modules. Tested the HAZOP module with 61 students in CENG303.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

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Understanding the Practical Consequences of Metabolic Interactions Using Computer Simulations

Project Overview
Project Title	Understanding the Practical Consequences of Metabolic Interactions Using Computer Simulations
Project Leader	Prof John Barford
School / Dept	SENG / CENG
Project Duration	Sept 2002 - Oct 2004
Project Description	This project dealt with metabolic pathway interactions for energy generation and manufacture of intermediates in the process of making major components in cells, which are important areas in biochemistry courses. Currently students are weak in the quantitative understanding of such metabolism as well as the meaningful relationships (or results) of the pathway interactions. The project involved the design and development of an instructional software package allowing students to explore, visualize, and develop a quantitative understanding of metabolism and its effect on cellular energetics. Further practical applications were developed in other topics e.g. environmental biotechnology.
Project Outcome	Development of a calculator program for metabolism interaction using Excel. Preparing supporting learning materials (background theories and problem sets): to help students understand the quantitative aspects of metabolism interaction by utilizing the calculator, a document containing a user manual, the background theories and references, plus 4 problem sets were prepared and have been integrated into the program. Development of User-interface using Visual Basic, inlcuding instructional design, storyboarding, interface design and programming. Pilot testing and refinement of the program. The program was further tested in 2005 after the project completed.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Third \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

Teaching Enhancement using Physical Models and Short Video Clips

Project Overview
Project Title	Teaching Enhancement using Physical Models and Short Video Clips
Project Leader	Prof J S KUANG
School / Dept	SENG / CIVL
Project Duration	Nov 2004 - Jun 2005
Project Description	The objectives of this project were to identify the appropriate subject matter (e.g. stress, deformation, collapse, pollutant movement, landfill) that could be taught by using models and video clips, and to fabricate models and video clips for civil engineering courses in order to enhance teaching quality and performance. These products were used for classroom teaching.
Project Outcome	Fabricated models and video clips for engineering course as to enhance teaching quality. Video clips were used in Spring 2005 in CIVL141 and CIVL344 with 165 students.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan
Adaptation	Adaptation from Effectiveness of using Different Teaching Tools for Classroom Teaching

Enhanced Teaching and Learning of Civil Engineering Drafting Using Multimedia Tools

Project Overview
Project Title	Enhanced Teaching and Learning of Civil Engineering Drafting Using Multimedia Tools
Project Leader	Prof J S Kuang & Thomas W C Hu
School / Dept	SENG / CIVL
Project Duration	Feb 2004 - Jan 2006
Project Description	In this project, a set of multimedia interactive tools were developed to help students visualize 3D drawing examples and the teaching approach included screen capture movies with narration and on-screen tips to explain software operations, enabling students to view them at their own pace, with appropriate assessment methods. The course content was re-examined and rewritten so that the CAD tools could be applied to other civil engineering courses. This promoted knowledge transfer from the drawing class to other areas. The project made it possible to have self-taught, online CAD courses for students.
Project Outcome	A series of 3D animation videos were produced for various civil engineering structures such as footings, columns and beams to supplement traditional 2D teaching materials. In similar drawing classes offered elsewhere, these important yet complicated types of structures are seldom presented in 3D, not to mention the use of dynamic illustration as done here at HKUST. A collection of screen capture movies were also produced to supplement traditional teaching material on most of the CAD commands covered in this course. The course structure has also been re-designed to optimize the incorporation of the technological developments. The civil engineering construction knowledge is imparted first, with the aid of animation videos. Only after the students gain familiarity with the concrete structures will they start to learn how to draw, as students must clearly understand what they are drawing before trying to master the use of CAD programs. Then, during the teaching of CAD, the use of screen capture videos successfully removed the problem of having to “progress at the pace of the slowest student”. As compared to the old approach, which was to cover AutoCAD first, then structural details, the new sequence should be more beneficial to students. A student questionnaire was also given to assess the effectiveness of the aforementioned courseware developed, at the end of Fall 2005. The results were positive.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Third \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

3D Visualization and Simulation of Structures using Finite Element Analysis for Teaching

Project Overview
Project Title	3D Visualization and Simulation of Structures using Finite Element Analysis for Teaching
Project Leader	Prof Ben Young
School / Dept	SENG / CIVL
Project Duration	Mar 2004 - Jun 2005
Project Description	Most classroom teaching is conducted using transparencies and PowerPoint presentations to deliver the lecture material, which are constrained to 2D. However, for most engineering concepts, it is necessary to show the object in 3D. For instance, the stresses, strains and deformations of an object are the important parameters in illustratating structural behaviour when it was subject to loading. However, these phenomena are too abstract to delineate simply using transparencies and PowerPoint presentations. The primary objective of this project was to develop 3D visualization and simulation of structures using finite element analysis to enhance student understanding. In the 3D computer animation, the stresses, strains and deformations of a structure were clearly shown. Different stress levels were shown in different colours, and the deformations could be physically seen in the animations. The 3D computer animation could be uploaded to the web for adoption in other engineering courses.
Project Outcome	Improvement in students learning of structural engineering courses. Video clips showing the stresses, strains, actual deformations and collapse of 3D structures. Change in students attitude for learning engineering courses consist of complex 3D structures.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Progress Report: First \| Second \| Final Report
Adaptation	Full Project

Extending Gong for the Support of Teaching Speech Recognition

Project Overview
Project Title	Extending Gong for the Support of Teaching Speech Recognition
Project Leader	Prof Brian Mak
School / Dept	SENG / COMP
Project Duration	Jan 2005 - Dec 2005
Project Description	This project intended to enhance the GONG system to support the tuition of speech recognition. Software available from Cambridge University was used to extend the system so that speech segmentation techniques might be effectively taught to students. Student feedback and observation during usage was used to refine the development.
Project Outcome	In this adaptation project, the original Gong system was enhanced to support teaching speech recognition. Specifically, a speech recognizer wholly developed by our own speech research group was integrated into the Gong system. Different acoustic models, grammar networks, and dictionaries could also be loaded into the system so that they could be compared in terms of their capabilities to produce better recognition accuracies. Their differences could be visually compared by performing word-by-word “forced alignment” on a common recorded message using the common recognizer. In addition, the recorded message might also be visualized in the time domain as a waveform, or in the spectral domain as a spectrogram. The new Gong system was used by the students of the COMP621F course offered in Spring 2005, and a follow-up survey showed that most students agreed that the new Gong was useful in comparing different acoustic models, and helped visualize input speech message. In brief, a major deliverable was a new Gong system that has a built-in speech recognition capability. It was believed that there are many teaching applications for the new Gong, and it could be used to enhance the learning of speech recognition technologies.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Final Report
Adaptation	Adaptation from Gong, a web based communication tool

Plagiarism Detection for Programming and Natural Languages

Project Overview
Project Title	Plagiarism Detection for Programming and Natural Languages
Project Leader	Prof David Rossiter
School / Dept	SENG / COMP
Project Duration	Jan 2004 - Dec 2004
Project Description	This project aimed to assess a submitted document, determine its level and location of plagiarism by comparing its content with that of other documents. The proposed tool was part of the system, Mark My Words, so it could be adopted as a regular assessment item. Because it addressed plagiarism of both computer and natural languages, the tool could be applied across disciplines. The data might provide valuable insight into the level of plagiarism, and so might be employed widely in planning future educational policies.
Project Outcome	Plagiarism detecting was supported in two modes: 1) automatic flagging of suspect text in a number of files when those files are submitted to the server, and 2) selection of particular text segments by a marker during the marking of an assignment. The program allowed the degree and location of plagiarism to be reliably determined. The types of plagiarism which couold be detected include plagiarism from the web, plagiarism from other students and self-plagiarism from previously submitted assignments Template was also developed which advised students how to avoid plagiarism. These were enhanced based on user feedback to provide step-by-step assistance in academic citation formats.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Final Report
Adaptation	Adaptation from Mark My Words

Improving Time Management for Students through the Use of an Educational Game

Project Overview
Project Title	Improving Time Management for Students through the Use of an Educational Game
Project Leader	Prof David Rossiter
School / Dept	SENG / COMP
Project Duration	Jan 2004 - Sept 2004
Project Description	Time management is a major problem encountered by students entering university and it impacts greatly on their learning. For instance, they do not always start working until the deadline is near, resulting in a rushed and poor quality assignment. They have to stay up late, attending early morning lectures with minimal attention or even missing them completely. This project aimed to cultivate an appreciation of effective time management which was achieved through an entertaining but educational game-style simulation.The time management program was similar to the popular ‘Sims’ set of games. Students interacted with the main (simulated) game character ‘Sim’, helping it to perform the major daily tasks they themselves were required to do. In working through this simulation, they learnt how to plan their time effectively.
Project Outcome	The major outcome of this project was the educational software which teaches time management in an original and engaging manner. Project website : http://www.cs.ust.hk/time_management/ Essential parameters in time management are embodied as different entities and attributes in the game. A conference paper named, “Improving time management for students through the use of an educational game” on the project was presented at the Teaching & Learning Symposium 2004.
Status	Completed
Project Documents (Only accessible by HKUST users)	Project Plan Final Report Project-end Review by Project Leader
Adaptation	Full Project

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