Newsletter No. 186

Comments from Teachers Mr. George Jor, English Language Teaching Unit My personal experience of CU Forum began from the time the system was launched in 2000.I have been using it OS a supplementary tool to e n h a n cc an English Language Teaching (ELT]course 'Technical Communications' (http:// h u m a n u m . a r t s . c u h k . e d u . h k / ~ c m c / 1 1 1 1 ) . On the average, there are six course instructors and about 200 to 300 engineering and science students per semester in the c o u r s e. In the fall semester of 2 0 0 0, there were 16sections with an average of 20 students per section and a total of 329 students. I have served as the course coordinator and web contact offering tailor-made CUForum induction meetings for my colleagues and their classes. CU Forum has four main features. First, the Messages feature allows mc to post, and for students to read, the course instructions and announcements. Second,the Files feature enables me to distribute lecture notes, marking schemes, and good writing models for students' reference. Students find the marking schemes and assignment instructions usefuland know what is being expected of them before they do the assignments. Teachers find good writing models and students' 'A' grade assignments helpful as a kind of feedback enriched with models when discussing the returned assignments with the class. Theenriched feedback helps students raise their standards. Third,the Links feature makes it possible for the teacher and students to shore web links to useful online resources with brief explanations for the recommendation. Fourth, the Members feature helps students and teachers locate class members' e-mail addresses easily. I would like to moke a few enhancement suggestions. First, user education is important for both teachers and students alike. I have learned a lot from the ITSC seminars on CU Forum and used it in the induction meetings for my students. I attended a recent seminar hosted by Stanley Yuen, Christina Keing, TessLi, and Ivan Sin on 21st March 2001, and found it very useful. Therewere demonstrations, summaries, trouble-shooting highlights, sorting messages by ASCII code order, hands-on experience, and useful FAQs. I have no hesitation in recommending it to other teachers.I am pleased to learn that the ITSCis making continuous improvement on the tool such as on how to let teachers move files more easily, e-mail functions, and daily summaries. I hope there will also be a slight change in the user interface, that is, My CU Forum should be put before the Forum List Thereason is obvious. Whenreading English, people tend to read from top to bottom and from left to right For the user, it represents an intuitive design of customization and priority, in other words, putting first things f i r s t/ Another enhancement suggestion is for the students' consideration — active learning with new technology like CU Forum is the key to survival in a knowledge-based economy. A positive attitude and a mindset for life-long learning con be their asset and become their ultimate protection in a changing world. Students should not merely look for easy grades or avoid taking risks or shy away from new courseware. Sometimes, to look for innovative solutions to our learning problems,we need to think beyond the box. It is in our interest to take some risks, to live and I learnon the edge of chaos between too much and too few structure. To sum up my experience of using new technologies for teaching, it has been an experiment in active learning. Prof. Fu Ping-ping, Department of Management I started using the web when I was teaching in the US. So when I came here in 1998, I asked the staff from the computer centre if there was any software that I could use for running discussions. Theydid not have one then, but were going to start one.So I became an experimental user. I started with the WebBoardand used it for my principal management course. I had students post discussion questions and called it our 'class extension'. Students who used it enjoyed it, so I have kept that as part of the class ever since. The following semester, when the University adopted the WebCTsoftware, I became a trial user again. I have used it for my undergraduate as well as MBA students. Most of the time, I use it as a supplementary tool to continue discussions from the 'real' class, to let students exchange ideas and ask questions. My MBA students who have to travel overseas during class time use it to keep track of the class progress because I also load class notes up there. To help students gain experience working in the virtual environment, I have alsojoined faculty members from several other universities acrossthe world in organizing cross-cultural Internet projects for the students to work on. This semester, I am teaching a human resources management class.In addition to discussion on topics we have covered in class, I also ask students to post current issues in the news that arc related to human resources management Students have provided a lot of interesting and important topics and the discussions have definitely helped them connect what we learn in class with what happens in the real world. I would not say that the useof the web has helped every one of my students, however. I I would only say that most of the students who have been actively participating have enjoyed using the web. I have 110students in my two classes. The total messages have exceeded 1,300. Prof. Ho Man - koon, Department of Curriculum and Instruction I began developing web-based teaching for a Chinese language course about two years ago. I believe that it can e n h a n c the effectiveness of both teaching and learning through the interaction and exchange between students and teachers. I also believe that web-based teaching con increase student motivation and enable them to learn on their own. Thecourse materials on this website is learner- centred, with a design based on theories in cognitive psychology. Somepeople believe it is very difficult and inefficient for Chinese to be taught on the I n t e r n e t . However, the experiences of my students and myself haveproved that web-based teaching of Chineseis beneficial for both teacher and student Besides being flexible in terms of time and location, web-based teaching also allows teachers to give appropriate advice to students and to assess their performance. Prof. Fan Sin-pin, Department of Chinese Language and Literature 我是上學期初開始使用 CU Forum 的。在這之前我 有一個自已的網頁，貼上了一些課程大綱、教材、學 生的和自己的文章，網頁上也有一個留言版，是那種 最普通的類型。我本來希望學生和其他朋友可以在留 言版上進行一些課外交流，或者延續課堂上的討論， 可是效果並不理想。不是留言太少，而是留言版的功 能不夠用，首先是留言不能按照話題分類排列，看起 來很混亂，其次是留言者的身份無法確認，可以用假 名，甚至每次署上不同的名字。後來大學的電腦技術 人員建議我試用新推出的 CU Forum ，我就用兩個課程 的名義開了三個論壇，下學期我又開了另外兩個，也 介紹了系內同事試用。 CU Forum 在某程度上解決了以上的問題，但對教學 有多大幫助，則要看課程設計和師生興趣而定。以下 學期的兩個課程為例，一個是七十人的大學通識課， 我把講義分期放在網上，讓學生下載，省去印發的麻 煩，但網上提問的人不多，通常是詢問習作和考試的 要求。另一個是小班的文藝寫作課，我要求學生把習 作貼到 CU Fo r um 上，選出一部份在課上討論，另一部 份則自由閱讀；留言方面，可以延續課堂上未討論完 的話題，也可以就沒有討論過的的習作發言。雖然難 免有些插科打諢的話，但因為系統會顯示真實姓名， 所以留言較有分寸，氣氛也頗熱烈，甚至有些沒有修 讀的同學也會發言。同學交流的機會多了，認識較 深，上課時的氣氛也融洽些。總括來說， CU Forum 的 效果還是要看同學的投入程度，但它起碼提供了一個 課外聯繫的機會。 T h eWayAhead T h e I TSC r e c o g n i z es t he n e c e s s i ty o f m e a s u r i ng t he effectiveness of WBT a nd i d e n f i t y i ng its niche areas i n o r der to j us t i fy sustainable l ong - t e rm resource injection. W i t h this i n m i n d , i t h e l d a semi nar last mo n t h , ' Assess i ng t he Consequences of I n f o r m a t i on Te c hno l ogy i n Ed u c a t i o n: Issues, P r ob l ems, a nd Oppo r t un i t i es '. Prof. Roger Y i n of the Un i v e r s i ty of Wi scons in — Wh i t ewa t e r, an expe rt i n the area, was i n v i t ed to speak o n the consequences of us i ng technology i n course delivery, and the issue of l i n k i ng compu t er t echno l ogy to the scholarship of teaching. A set of pre- and post-course surveys are also i n place to evaluate the effectiveness of web-based teaching. A n d wh i l e the cu r r ent WBT p l a t f o rm w i l l r ema in the ma j or d e l i v e r y p l a t f o rm at t he U n i v e r s i t y, t he I TSC has p l e d g ed to con t i nuous ly explore n ew and better course de l i ve ry technologies and p l a t f o rms. 中大通訊 第一八六期 二零零一年六月十九日 4