Bulletin No. 2, 2016

14 Chinese University Bulletin No. 2, 2016 Pocket-size Chinese Materia Medica Database Mr. Michael Chung , lecturer in the School of Chinese Medicine, has been exploring ways to help students memorize and apply medical knowledge from ancient prescriptions to modern use. In the old days, revision of herbal knowledge involved preparing flash cards and flipping through medical dictionaries. For tech-savvy learners of the 21st century, absorbing information by swiping the screens of their portable smart gadgets is the way to go. He therefore thought of developing a mobile app to help students revise herbal knowledge on-the-go, so that students do not need to rely on stacks of lecture slides. Mr. Chung worked with the ITSC Courseware Development team to develop the Chinese Materia Medica Memorizer app to help students learn the basics of Chinese herbal medicine, such as names and properties of herbs, in bite-size chunks. He incorporated an e-book, an e-flashcard and an ‘edutaining’ revision game into the mobile app. The e-book contains 100 types of materia medica illustrated with photos. Its search function helps students efficiently look up a particular herbal drug and compare those with similar properties. The content of the e-flashcard is customizable— category, flavour, functions and nature—for autonomous learning. The embedded tracking system helps learners understand their learning progress and review unfamiliar items. ‘About half of the undergraduates have tried the mobile app and found it useful for revision,’ Mr. Chung said. Gamification is particularly well- received among students. By matching the two key herbal properties (such as functions and flavours), the ‘edutaining’ game challenges students to apply their herbal knowledge within a restrained timeframe. ‘Some students like the cartoon design of the game. I remember one student screen- capped his victory with his smartphone and shared it on Facebook, which was contagious enough to attract his peers to play the game,’ he added. ‘The development of the courseware took 12 months in 2013 when smartphone technology was still young. We spent a long time to learn the technical limitations such as compatibility across different mobile operating systems, so as to explore the design solutions which fit our pedagogical objective.’ To Mr. Chung, an effective e-learning platform should facilitate the active learning of students. When students become more confident of the knowledge they have acquired, they will engage more actively in the sharing of ideas and further elaborations in lectures.