CUHK Expo 2019/20

For most postgraduate students, how to write a thesis is a major problem because of the lack of relevant experience. The ILC consolidated valuable English academic resources to facilitate their study in the past, however, support for Chinese academic writing is still insufficient. In order to strengthen support in this area, we have developed the “PG Corner (Chinese Version)”, which aims to help postgraduate students to write Chinese thesis or research paper. We collect information that students may need, for example, for critical thinking, we recommend both web resources and printed materials that help them to study. Students can find instruction of how to write research proposals by clicking various links, and browse through different proposal examples by subject category. Hyperlinks of selected relevant websites and reference books in the CUHK library are also included in our design to facilitating students’ self-learning in oral presentation and thesis writing. In addition, information on consultation services are provided to students, which allow them to seek advices on writing Chinese essays, or having a face-to-face discussion with the ILC teachers.

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Narrative Qualitative Analysis (NQA) was developed as the first objective (i.e. based on teacher’s evaluation) and qualitative (i.e. not on Likert scales) assessment tool for the General Education Foundation (GEF) Programme from 2014 to 2017. NQA aims to evaluate and understand students’ cognitive complexity by systematically analyzing students’ writing assignments. A good understanding of the students’ ability would help teacher cultivate an appropriate learning environment and design suitable learning activities. In NQA, the development of cognitive complexity is divided into five key steps. Correspondingly, there are five thinking performance patterns. In this poster, we will present two main results from our pilot study. First of all, by comparing the NQA result from teachers’ evaluation with students’ self-evaluation on their thinking performance patterns, it is discovered that students generally overate their cognitive complexity. Secondly, through a systematic NQA study on students’ writing assignments, it is found that most students are clustered in the lowest two levels of thinking performance patterns. Furthermore, the study also highlights some common characteristics of students' thinking, which may provide clues for teaching improvement.

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Building on the foundation of work from previous years, in 2019 the Expert Learner Seminar Series (ELSS) was launched in blended learning mode at CityU. The aim of ELSS is to help new university students achieve their academic potential, while blended learning aims to offer students a combination of 1) face-to-face teaching and learning, as well as 2) on-line learning.
The series was held approximately over the first six weeks of Semester A, 2019. A one-hour, face-to-face seminar was held the first week. The first seminar provided an overview of expert learning and an introduction to the topics which students would study in the series. Students also completed the Learning and Studies Strategy Inventory (LASSI) in the first session. During weeks two through six, students took part in four, on-line, video-based seminars on learning and study strategies using Canvas as a platform. In the final week, students met again in a face-to-face seminar for a summary and conclusion of the series and to re-take LASSI. A total of 99 first-year undergraduate students completed the seminars, including the pre- and post- LASSI. Results of the pre- and post- LASSI will be presented in the poster.

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Service-Learning (S-L) is a pedagogy widely adopted by some Higher Education Institutions in Hong Kong. S-L is a combination of academic learning and meaningful service through reflection which also puts teaching and learning in a social context for facilitating socially responsible knowledge transfer (Conway, Amel & Gerwien, 2009). S-L, which reflects Lingnan’s motto “Education for Service”, has been integrated into the curriculum at Lingnan University since 2006. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the impact of S-L on whole-person and career development from the graduates’ perspectives because there is only a limited body of prior studies in this area. Moreover, the findings can inform teaching and learning via S-L, on the basis of graduates’ perspectives on what students need, in order to flourish in their future careers. Besides incorporating a quasi-experimental design, a mixed-method approach was adopted for the research. In the quantitative part of our research, a quota sampling approach was adopted, under which six groups of LU graduates based on their year of graduation and on whether they had undertaken S-L were invited to complete the questionnaire between June and September 2018. In total, 424 graduates with S-L experience and 416 graduates without S-L experience completed the online questionnaire. In the qualitative part of our research, a sample of interviewees was selected based on the logic of Maximum Variation Sampling. 13 graduates with S-L experience were invited to participate in a one-to-one telephone interview. Each interview was audio-recorded, transcribed, and content analyzed using grounded theory. The findings indicated that S-L experience has significant perceived impacts on the student’s career choices, self-perceived research skills, and civic responsibility, which proof the S-L impacts on teaching and learning.

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An important role of tertiary education is to prepare students for a rapidly changing world. On top of professional knowledge and skills and generic competences, PolyU finds it more important to develop and enhance students’ ability to learn to learn. ‘Learning to learn’ (L2L) is more than just learning. It covers a range of skills in multiple domains supporting student development in understanding themselves as learners, managing their learning, devising strategies that are effective and appropriate for themselves, finding ways to improve their learning outcomes and experiences across different situations and ultimately becoming confident and effective life-long self-learners. A framework with a two-pronged approach (programme-embedded and student self-managed) to strengthen the L2L element in the programme and subject curriculum has been proposed. Eventually, all undergraduate programmes will incorporate L2L components into their curriculum to support students’ L2L development across the entire period of their study.

To prepare for the implementation of the L2L framework in the 2021/22 academic year, a two-year project was launched in 2018 to pilot some contextualized activities and materials with First Year students in Freshman Seminars of three Faculties. The pilot experience provides useful information about the process and the support that programmes, faculty members and students need for L2L development.




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jcMotion provides Education through practical Experience and Exposure.
This is a unique platform under the School of Journalism and Communication, CUHK.

The idea is to provide systematic training in workshop format for our newly admitted students. By matching the expertise of our School’s professors & lecturers, our alumni network in the media and communication field, as well as our talented students, we provide creative solutions and trainings to schools, universities, NGOs, charity organizations and other parties.

From media education to event management, from visual design to video production, we cover a variety of media expertise. All the projects are guided by media professionals and completed by jc-Apprentices.

New members of jcApprentices are recruited on a regulare basis since 2012. jcApprentices learn from one another, their seniors as well as professionals from the industry. Connections are made throughout the process. jcMotion Facebook page and jcApprentice group are created as an effective networking platform for both work and learning opportunities.
jcMotion also spreads knowledge and new ideas. jcMotion Publishing specializes in publishing e-papers, e-books and e-lectures.

Our Missions
• Enriching students’ practical skills
• Providing chances for students to work with industrial professionals
• Bridging between school and society
• Nurturing a creative community
• Providing convenient service to school
• As creative partners to CUHK Departments

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Oral presentation is one of the most widely used methods in assessing student learning outcomes of content comprehension and communication skills. Nevertheless, both students and teachers face challenges in optimizing the benefits of such learning activity. From students' perspective, they only receive a letter grade but no feedback from the audience (teacher and classmates). From teachers' perspective, students keep making the same mistakes throughout their course of study. Besides, students' engagement in classmates' presentations is problematic. Our team developed an app “Gongyeh 講嘢”, also a web platform, to address these issues through students' presentation video recording and real-time online audience feedback. The main features of the Gongyeh app include: (1) a presenter starts the video recording with his/her mobile device and thus the audience can start giving real-time feedback; (2) three categories of feedback (open comments, questions preset by presenter, and assessment rubrics preset by teacher); (3) only the presenter and teacher have the recorded video and feedback; and (4) the feedback given by the audience is anonymous to the presenter (just known to the teacher) and time-synchronized with the video. So far, 42 teachers (33 PolyU, 1 HKCC, 4 HKU, 3 EdUHK, and 1 from a high school in Myanmar) and 1,510 students used the app. The project team received very positive feedback, from both students and teachers, on the effectiveness of the app in helping students improve their presentation skills and enhancing students' engagement in classmates' presentations.

Large class teaching can be challenging, especially on highly complicated topics to be effectively delivered within 45-90 mins. Here, we adopted a well-known business approach called DAGMAR [“Defining advertising goals to measure advertising results” by Russell Colley] for teaching ~200 medical students on a highly complicated professional topic, “Pharmacogenomics” (MEDU2600) at CUHK. The core essence of DAGMAR is a highly connected communication axis of Awareness-Comprehension-Conviction-Action (ACCA). Often time, large classroom teachings for medical students focus on comprehension of knowledge mainly. Yet, with DAGMAR, communication activities (i.e. advertising) resulting in “buying actions” mean ultimate success. Similarly, designed teaching activities in a way that students “could and would action” is our ultimate teaching/communication goal. In a single lecture, we purposely adopted the ACCA elements of DAGMAR. We first sparked the “awareness” of the entire class by bringing them outside the classroom with a short documentary demonstrating the life-or-dead impacts of pharmacogenomics. This was immediately followed by “comprehension” (i.e. detailed scientific and medical information). “Conviction” was then built by showcasing world examples of pharmacogenomics, and related databases/resources (to convict them to act with solid knowledge). Finally, students’ “action” was drawn with one open question that inspired thinking and critical challenge of their learning to be applied to local settings. The approach was found appealing to students, not only reflected in satisfactory CTE comments, but also with students’ active discussions with family members. Subsequently, medical students became self-motivated to engage in deeper learning by initiating related medical virtual research lab talks outside classrooms.

In October 2014 the Faculty of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong held the first of a series of seminars covering topics around the use of Chinese customary law in present Hong Kong. Much to the surprise of even the organizers over the course of the next four years the seminar series developed into the most successful continuing professional development scheme in the history of Hong Kong legal education. This paper discusses how the seminar series originated, how it developed, why it has been so successful, plans its future development as well as general conclusions which can be drawn from this experience.