October 2006 Volume 9 Number 4

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Weber, M. (2000). Modeling Technological Change under Uncertainty in Integrated Assessment Models for Climate Change, retrieved January 7, 2004 from http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/~weber.michael/modeling_tc.html. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E., McDermott, R. & Snyder, R. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: a Guide to Managing Knowledge. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.. 77
Donoghue, S. L. (<strong>2006</strong>). Institutional Potential for Online Learning: A Hong Kong Case Study. Educational Technology & Society, 9 (4), 78-94. Institutional Potential for Online Learning: A Hong Kong Case Study Sue L. Donoghue 17A Island View, Midvale Village, 21 Middle Lane, Discovery Bay, Lantau Island, Hong Kong Tel/Fax: +852 28161607 beldon@netvigator.com ABSTRACT Hong Kong’s tertiary education environment has changed dramatically in recent years with universities now facing specific educational challenges in the areas of critical thinking, ‘life-long learning’ and English language. The question exists as to what pedagogic developments will best allow the universities to address these challenges. In this paper, the appropriateness of online pedagogy as one response to these challenges is assessed through use of illustrative case-examples and post-course surveys. The potential of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) to implement this pedagogy is examined through a systematic consideration of the requirements for embedding online learning, specifically student and institutional knowledge, culture, and resources. The case examples provide empirical evidence to suggest that online environments are useful in addressing these challenges, largely as a consequence of afforded flexibility in teaching and learning, support of more student-centered learning approaches, and a high degree of student engagement. Opportunity for international collaborative teaching, with associated benefits in curriculum extension, cost-spreading and benchmarking, is also demonstrated. Within HKU, student factors appear to pose no major constraint to such development, but there exist significant inconsistencies in terms of institutional culture, pedagogic knowledge and non-hardware resources. The author concludes that small-scale online developments are viable and the cost of establishing and maintaining these need not be prohibitive. While online learning holds promise for HKU, the University will require internal institutional change to fully realize this potential. Keywords Online learning, E-learning, Pedagogy, Strategic planning, Higher education, The University of Hong Kong Introduction The tertiary education environment of Hong Kong (HK) has been subject to significant flux over the last 15 years, as a consequence of evolving political and educational objectives. A number of challenges, including massification of undergraduate student numbers and changing graduate skill requirements, require universities to re-examine the nature of teaching and learning. Given these challenges, and the pervasive and integral use of personal information technology in HK society, it is timely to examine the potential of online learning as an appropriate response to the changing HK tertiary environment. Much has been made of the synergistic potential between online learning and the growing educational emphasis on ‘life-long learning’, with its intrinsic demands for flexibility (e.g. Ryan, Scott, Freeman, & Patel, 2000, p. 10). This paper examines, through empirical illustrative case study, the degree to which The University of Hong Kong (HKU), Hong Kong’s pre-eminent tertiary institution, is positioned to embrace online learning. There are two considerations to this: firstly, whether online learning environments, through their design, may offer opportunities to help address the specific challenges faced, and secondly, what is tangibly required by both the university and the student body to embed online learning environments. The Hong Kong tertiary environment: educational challenges Massification Immediately prior, and following the 1989 Secretary for Education and Manpower education strategy, there was a veritable ‘explosion’ of tertiary student numbers in HK (UGC, 1996). While many nations struggle to accommodate slowly increasing numbers of tertiary students as a result of societal evolution toward service economies and ‘qualification deflation’, such expansion was overshadowed in HK by active government policy to rapidly and extensively increase the percentage of students continuing into the tertiary sector. First-year firstdegree places (full time equivalents) at University Grants Committee (UGC) funded institutions increased from ISSN 1436-4522 (online) and 1176-3647 (print). © International Forum of Educational Technology & Society (IFETS). The authors and the forum jointly retain the copyright of the articles. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than IFETS must be honoured. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from the editors at kinshuk@ieee.org. 78
Page 1 and 2:
October 2006 Volume 9 Number 4
Page 3 and 4:
Guidelines for authors Submissions
Page 5 and 6:
How Does Educational Technology Ben
Page 7 and 8:
Adaptivity is one of the most impor
Page 9 and 10:
3. Ease of editing and updating: wh
Page 11 and 12:
Accessible and personalized Learnin
Page 13 and 14:
From this definition, we figured ou
Page 15 and 16:
Verifying contents Figure 3. The pa
Page 17 and 18:
Figure 7. The ISA on line interface
Page 19 and 20:
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre
Page 21 and 22:
World Wide Web Consortium (1999a).
Page 23 and 24:
guiding and supporting environment
Page 25 and 26:
As an example, to improve the acces
Page 27 and 28:
option). Although this finding migh
Page 29 and 30:
of eLearning content and enhance th
Page 31 and 32: Hodgings, W. & Duval, E. (2002). IE
Page 33 and 34: the entire course of study. This sy
Page 35 and 36: information useful for the contextu
Page 37 and 38: Nr of student 25 20 15 10 5 0 a - w
Page 39 and 40: Vincenzo, a second year student, ne
Page 41 and 42: Evaluation Recently embodied conver
Page 43 and 44: The interaction may be performed on
Page 45 and 46: Poggi, I., Pelachaud, C., & de Rosi
Page 47 and 48: Lanzilotti, R., Ardito, C., & Costa
Page 49 and 50: quality in use, which is measured b
Page 51 and 52: process of designing high quality c
Page 53 and 54: eLSE methodology Designers and eval
Page 55 and 56: Execution phase Execution phase act
Page 57 and 58: on the inspection process and, cons
Page 59 and 60: Piccinini, N., & Scollo, G. (2006).
Page 61 and 62: Answers and reinforcement A.1: Use
Page 63 and 64: potential project ideas (from pure
Page 65 and 66: For each column in Table 2, the sum
Page 67 and 68: educational goals and the various r
Page 69 and 70: A new computerized Records Manageme
Page 71 and 72: eflected in artifacts and other str
Page 73 and 74: any distributed community include b
Page 75 and 76: message in order to obtain a respon
Page 77 and 78: Figure 3. Social network after intr
Page 79 and 80: increased face-to-face collaboratio
Page 81: References Bogenrieder, I. (2002).
Page 85 and 86: contemplate part-time, rather than
Page 87 and 88: espective institutions. The primary
Page 89 and 90: greater flexibility in course selec
Page 91 and 92: Cost-benefit One distinct benefit o
Page 93 and 94: Resources The development of online
Page 95 and 96: courses where it is has little pote
Page 97 and 98: A fellowship programme, such as the
Page 99 and 100: Moore, M.G. (1998). Introduction. I
Page 101 and 102: Software reuse has two dimensions,
Page 103 and 104: Courseware development process mode
Page 105 and 106: Didactics analysis This phase consi
Page 107 and 108: Process didactics design We focus o
Page 109 and 110: The repository is organized into co
Page 111 and 112: the analysis and the design phase o
Page 113 and 114: Figure 12. Weaving content and dida
Page 115 and 116: complete user-specific (author, ins
Page 117 and 118: References ADL (Advanced Distribute
Page 119 and 120: Bender, D. M., & Vredevoogd, J. D.
Page 121 and 122: (see Figure 2). The incorporation o
Page 123 and 124: Figure 4: Example of Summary Image
Page 125 and 126: The competitive nature of design cl
Page 127 and 128: Dias, L. B. (1999, November). Integ
Page 129 and 130: materials built into the system. Th
Page 131 and 132: This theory of multimedia learning
Page 133 and 134:
E-Tutor (with video). Two weeks aft
Page 135 and 136:
empirically tested in TML environme
Page 137 and 138:
Rieber, L. P., (1990). Animation in
Page 139 and 140:
Appendix B The following 44 items r
Page 141 and 142:
Appendix C A Sample of Exam Questio
Page 143 and 144:
Appendix D Perceived Usefulness Que
Page 145 and 146:
Kirkpatrick, and Peck (2001) have a
Page 147 and 148:
2001). The system thus aims to assi
Page 149 and 150:
a strong agreement between the two
Page 151 and 152:
of the dynasty. 3. Information on
Page 153 and 154:
Comparing works designed using the
Page 155 and 156:
Tselios, N., Stoica, A., Maragoudak
Page 157 and 158:
strategies during their interaction
Page 159 and 160:
P(B|D) is the probability of a netw
Page 161 and 162:
Online help adaptation using Bayesi
Page 163 and 164:
AUSM that will return the most prob
Page 165 and 166:
direct experimentation with a new s
Page 167 and 168:
Figure 7. An example of use of the
Page 169 and 170:
Cooper, J. & Herskovits, E. (1992).
Page 171 and 172:
Goldberg, A. K., & Riemer, F. J. (2
Page 173 and 174:
In addition to convenience, propone
Page 175 and 176:
members increased flexibility. They
Page 177 and 178:
Oppenheimer, T. (1997, July). The c
Page 179 and 180:
The basis of reform in science educ
Page 181 and 182:
technology and are not confident in
Page 183 and 184:
participants that learning as a gro
Page 185 and 186:
A hierarchy of Systems Identifying
Page 187 and 188:
the change agents to recognize the
Page 189 and 190:
Nonis, A. S., & O’Bannon, B. (200
Page 191 and 192:
maintaining the interest levels of
Page 193 and 194:
Focus group interviews with our stu
Page 195 and 196:
course and again at the end of the
Page 197 and 198:
second phase of valuing, commitment
Page 199 and 200:
Kinzie, M. B., Whitaker, S. D., Nee
Page 201 and 202:
Although this work is based on a st
Page 203 and 204:
Website Design The MTP website (www
Page 205 and 206:
Researchers, for review and coding
Page 207 and 208:
quality that are the focus of the M
Page 209 and 210:
Kelley, M. A., Whitaker, S. D., Nee
Page 211 and 212:
or underserved populations. For exa
Page 213 and 214:
2004 Baruch College Computer Center
Page 215 and 216:
professional-level tools and resour
Page 217 and 218:
Third, with the exception of the Om
Page 219 and 220:
Hepp, P., Hinostroza, E., Laval, E.
Page 221 and 222:
The AccessForAll strategy complemen
Page 223 and 224:
of people with special needs, or di
Page 225 and 226:
(including where their search for r
Page 227 and 228:
international standard. The ISO pro
Page 229 and 230:
information will be expressed using
Page 231 and 232:
DC Metadata Terms: http://dublincor
Page 233 and 234:
Choquet, C., & Corbière, A. (2006)
Page 235 and 236:
TEL Standards, Specifications and P
Page 237 and 238:
The Resources Management Process ma
Page 239 and 240:
Step 1: Instantiation of the enterp
Page 241 and 242:
Step 5: Instantiation of the techno
Page 243 and 244:
correlation of the different viewpo
Page 245 and 246:
Hummel, H., Manderveld, J., Tatters
Page 247 and 248:
Karagiannidis, C. (2006). Book revi
Page 249 and 250:
Glenn, L. (2006). Book review: Visu
show all

October 2006 Volume 9 Number 4

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?