Learning the Dynamics and Beauty of Mathematics through GeoGebra

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Guest blogger series: Dr. Yat Ming CHAN
Dr. Yat Ming CHAN is a Lecturer at the Department of Mathematics, The University of Hong Kong. Chan specializes in differential geometry and is the developer of HKU GeoGebra resources. Check out this blog post to learn more about his teaching of mathematics.

The Department of Mathematics has been offering a range of courses to provide mathematics education to HKU students across faculties. We have designed courses specifically for students majoring in statistics, risk management, quantitative finance, actuarial science, engineering, business and economics. Almost all these courses involve the training of calculus at various levels. By means of introducing new dynamic and interactive instructional materials, it will be possible to improve students’ motivation and provide them with extra incentives in learning the underlying abstract mathematical concepts. With the support of HKU Teaching Development Grant, we have introduced GeoGebra resources on HKU Open edX for introductory-level mathematics courses.

This platform provides a library of GeoGebra applets to support teaching and learning for introductory-level mathematics courses. GeoGebra is a free and open-source dynamic mathematics software that can construct elements with points, vectors, polynomials and functions. The use of GeoGebra allows visualizations of mathematical ideas and creation of interactive instructional materials. The applets made in the platform will be designed to (i) supplement the concepts developed in class and (ii) prompt students to explore mathematics according to the guidelines.

For each learning object, students can learn or review one to two concepts and will be given opportunities to perform investigatory tasks. Students can click on checkboxes and follow the guidelines to achieve a specific goal, drag the points and move the sliders to observe the change, and input their own functions to examine different cases. All these activities, as well as follow-up questions, can foster student-centered learning and mathematical explorations.

Due to the versatility of GeoGebra, we expect that the materials in this platform will improve teachers’ capabilities to convey abstract and difficult mathematical concepts to students. Teachers and tutors can take advantage of this new resource to create complementary materials for their lectures and tutorials. We also expect that the use of GeoGebra applets in class will improve teacher-student interactions.

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Students can drag the point and use the slider to adjust the increment to observe how the secant lines approach to the tangent line. They can also input different functions for further investigation.

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Students can press the “Show more” button to check the details. They can then click to see and compare the area in the picture.

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Students can click the checkbox and move the line to verify the theorem.

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Using the slider students can change the value of k to obtain a continuous function.

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Our online calculators allow users to get straight to the answers with easy inputs. Graphs will also be provided for reference. Students can take advantage of these calculators for getting immediate answers and for verification of their solutions.

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The entire platform can be used in virtually all courses that involve the teaching of calculus such as MATH1009 Basic Mathematics for Business and Economics, MATH1011 University Mathematics I, MATH1013 University Mathematics II, MATH1821 Mathematical Methods for Actuarial Science I and MATH1851 Calculus and Ordinary Differential Equations.

References

  1. Learning Begins at the End of Your Comfort Zone
  2. DIY Video Production for Flipped Classroom

Co-Creating E-learning Tools: Combining Technology with Interpreting

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We build. We innovate. We share. It is our team’s mission to support teachers in building useful learning resources and sharing knowledge with technology. One recent project is the enhancement of the Resources for Interpreting website (傳譯資源網), and the development of a mobile app “Newssary” instigated by Dr Eva Ng from the Translation Programme of the School of Chinese, Faculty of Arts. Dr Ng is also the recipient of Teaching Innovative Award for the University’s Teaching Excellence Awards in 2017.

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The Interpreting Website
Funded by the Knowledge Exchange (KE) Office of HKU, this website provides free learning and training resources for anyone interested in interpreting. One star feature of the website is a glossary of bilingual Chinese-English terms on current affairs. It is a constantly udpated database of thousands of entries collected by students from the news over many years. This database is not only useful for professional interpreters, but also anyone interested in learning buzzwords in the news.

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Website Enhancement
For all glossaries and databases, a user-friendly searching function is indispensable. The database now supports searching by Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. An intelligent search function has also been added recently. For example, if you input “appr h” in the search bar, it will prompt you with “Appreciate Hong Kong”. In other words, even if the input information does not correspond exactly with the entries in the database, you will still be prompted with possible matching items and related terms.

Our team further enriched the website by producing a video on what is interpreting. We also set up a server and advised Dr Ng’s team on website architecture and theme development.


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Achievement
The website received an overwhelmingly positive response from its users, ranging from academics, PhD candidates and members of the general public:

  • “[The website] has everything that an interpreter, or anyone who teaches interpreting, or anyone who wants to use it for client education would want.” – Professor Holly Mikkelson, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, USA
  • “It’s a wonderful contribution for today’s students and practitioners of interpreting and translation.” – Professor Claudia Angelelli, Heriot-Watt University, UK

In recognition for her contribution to the interpreting community, Dr Ng was awarded the Faculty Knowledge Exchange (KE) Awards in 2016.

The Mobile App
Furthering our effort in revolutionizing the website, we have successfully transformed the glossary into an app, “Newssary”, to increase the accessibility of this useful learning resource. One key feature of the app is game-based learning – it is not just a dictionary, but made interactive for users to learn new vocabulary items through games.

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The app is now available on Apple Store and Google Play for FREE!

It is TELI’s mission to collaborate with teachers to create innovative e-learning resources. Interested? Contact us.

Further Reading

Experiential Learning at the Faculty of Education: High Tech and High Touch

Teachers nowadays are expected to serve well across a variety of contexts – inside and outside the classroom, at different geographical locations, or even online. They need to be more adaptive and versatile. With this vision in mind, the Faculty of Education is trying to expand their students’ competencies through Experiential Learning (EL) courses.

From the video, you will notice that students needed to apply theories that they learnt in settings unfamiliar to them. In the process, they often had to expand their “repertoire” in terms of subject matter knowledge as well as professional skills (e.g., classroom management and digital literacies). Working in groups provided students with the opportunities to contribute collaboratively to a creative process. The Faculty also organized many activities to support the reflection of experience, namely show-and-tell through multimedia sources such as videos and photos. In fact, part of the footage used in the video above was contributed by a Year 1 EL participant (see her original work here: https://uvision.hku.hk/playvideo.php?mid=20957).



EL courses can be seen as quite intense, but they are also rewarding. During the production of the video, TELI heard many stories of breakthroughs from students. Here are two that we’d like to share with you:

  • A Year 3 English major student learned the importance of building trust and relationship with students through the EL course “Ocean Park Experiential Learning Project”. During the guided tour in Ocean Park, she encountered a kid who was uninterested by the tour and refused to follow the group. Despite her extra effort in engaging the kid, he was still unwilling to follow through the demonstration. However, she was amazed by how the kid turned calm and quiet when a helper from his organization approached, took his hand and walked back to the group. This has framed her mindset as a future teacher that discipline does not come from authority or control. It’s built from relationship.
  • One of the Year 1 participants picked up new ideas of “time” after her EL course. In her “professional self”, she framed time as the school timetable, the scheduled duration of a lesson, and also empty space in her daily life that does not yield productive work. After joining the EL course “Curriculum Design in Cambodia,” she learnt that the concept of time has an emotional component – students need to feel motivated and happy to find the time well spent in learning. This insight has created an impact on how she spends her own time, and also how she is going to design her lessons in future.

To know more about how students learn through practice, please visit http://el.edu.hku.hk/.

Meeting the Hong Kong Cinema through a Global Lens Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Course Team

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Organised by Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative (TELI)

Date : September 9, 2017 (Saturday)
Time : 2:00pm
Venue : 1/F, Broadway Cinematheque, 3 Public Square St, Yau Ma Tei
Speakers :
– Gina Marchetti, Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
– Aaron Magnan-Park, Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, HKU
– Stacilee Ford, Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of History, HKU

Registration: http://bit.ly/hkcinema2

The talk will be conducted in English.

About the seminar:

Understanding the role Hong Kong plays on world screens animates the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) devoted to Hong Kong films. Together, let’s examine how the local and the global intersect to make Hong Kong cinema an integral part of popular culture around the world as well as a leading force in the development of world cinematic art.

This presentation introduces you to the key films, stars, directors, and genres that represent Hong Kong on global screens. We will chat about how flows of capital, people, technologies, ideas and creativity circulate and shape the cultural industry of filmmaking globally, resulting in transnational co-productions and cross-cultural co-operations.

Join us to learn more about Hong Kong cinema as an expressive art and a creative industry.

Films:

The Karate Kid (dir. Harald Zwart, 2010)
Fist of Fury / The Chinese Connection 精武門 (dir. Lo Wei 羅維, 1972)
Enter the Dragon 龍爭虎鬥 (dir. Robert Clouse, 1973)
An Autumn’s Tale 秋天的童話 (dir. Mabel Cheung 張婉婷, 1987)
The Killer 喋血雙雄(dir. John Woo 吳宇森, 1989)
Infernal Affairs 無間道 (dir. Andrew Lau and Alan Mak 劉偉強和麥兆輝, 2002)
In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (dir. Wong Kar Wai 王家衛, 2000)

HKU free online course: Hong Kong Cinema through a Global Lens

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MOOC certificates FAQ

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It’s always good to recognize your own achievement after reaching a goal. Same for completing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) – After working so hard for a course, the best way to reward yourself is to get a unique certificate. With a certificate, you can easily share your achievement with your employers and friends.

Q: How to get one?
A: As we offer courses on both edX and Coursera, the process of application differs for the two platforms. But in general, you will need to complete the following 3 steps to get the certificate:

  1. pass the course
  2. verify your ID on edX or Coursera
  3. make a payment to edX or Coursera

Q: How much is a certificate?
A: It depends on the course. Usually USD 50.

Q: Is it printed?
A: You will receive an e-certificate on the edX or Coursera platform. You will NOT receive a printed copy but you are welcome to print it. Check out these links for more details on where to find your Certificate on edX and Coursera.

You may also add your certificate to your LinkedIn profile (edX, Coursera).

Q: I followed all the steps but still can’t purchase / download it. What’s wrong?
A: Please contact us at enquiry@teli.hku.hk and let us know your name, the email you used to register at edX and/or Coursera, and the issue involved. You may also include a screenshot of the problem you encountered.

Q: Is the certificate issued by the University of Hong Kong?
A: It is jointly issued by the platform (edX or Coursera) and HKU. However, please note that the certificate does not count as credit towards a degree from our university.

Q: I can’t afford to pay for a certificate. What should I do?
A: You can file an application for financial aid from edX and Coursera.

Q: Can I still take the course without buying a certificate?
A: Yes of course! Most of our course content is free (except the Honours track in Materials in Oral Health). You are more than welcome to join our courses without buying a certificate. You can choose to upgrade to a verified certificate later if you change your mind. The verification upgrade deadline may be different for different courses. More details can be found here: edX, Coursera.

Still got a question? Contact us.
Happy learning!

Embracing Teaching and Learning Challenges and Trends in Higher Education

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Educators, wherever we are, should keep up with the challenges and trends in higher education worldwide. One effective way to stay informed is to engage in dialogues with colleagues from around the world. On 20 June, 2017, we learnt about the top 10 challenges and trends in Australian universities in a seminar delivered by Dr Caroline Steel, Strategic Educational Consultant, APAC, Blackboard International ASCILITE Life Member Awardee and Past President Adjunct Academic, The University of Queensland.

The following is the list of key challenges and trends ranked by Australian academic leaders in a study led by Dr Steel:

10 Teaching and Learning Challenges 10 Teaching and Learning Trends
  1. Student career development and employability
  2. Student engagement and satisfaction
  3. Assessment and feedback
  4. Technology-enhanced pedagogical practice
  5. Student attrition
  6. Improving work-integrated learning
  7. First year experience and transition
  8. Personalized adaptive learning
  9. Academic adoption of educational technologies
  10. Academic misconduct
  1. Learning analytics;
    Unbundling qualification
    (both items ranked number one)
  2. Teaching quality standards;
    Fully online courses;
    Students as partners
  3. Mobile-enabled learning;
    Adaptive learning technology
  4. Digital examinations
  5. MOOC’s;
    Open Education Resources (OER’s)

Key Challenges in Teaching and Learning
Student career development and employability is considered to be the biggest challenge in the Australian higher education context. In the past, universities mainly focused on training students into critical thinkers. In today’s rapidly changing society, educators should take one step further to educate both the ‘thinker’ and the ‘worker’. Given the rapid development of automation, AI and cognitive computing, some jobs may no longer exist in 10 years’ time. Students may not be fixed to one career throughout their lives. To prepare students for this highly uncertain future, HE institutions should help them acquire various employability skills and develop cross/trans-disciplinary thinking.

The second challenge is student engagement and satisfaction, in both on-campus & online teaching. According to Professor Karen Nelson, an interviewee in the study, student engagement constitutes of three parameters: behavioural, cognitive and affective. The challenge for universities is to “create the educational conditions that will trigger emotion and motivation so that students are engaged.”

Major Trends in Higher Education
The two most prominent trends in Australian higher education are learning analytics and unbundling qualification.

Learning analytics is a potential game changer in higher education. ‘There is enormous potential in learning analytics,’ said Professor Martin Carroll in an interview for the study. However, even though analytics have been used by lots of industries in Australia, high education is falling behind. It is necessary for institutions to keep up with the trend and look for ways to use analytics to improve teaching and learning.

Unbundling qualifications is another prominent trend in Australian higher education. Universities are now looking into the possibility of unbundling qualifications and micro-credentialing as alternative ways to provide learning, so that learners can obtain the skills they need as quickly as possible. For example, instead of completing an entire MBA programme, some professionals may only want to learn certain components of the degree. If universities are able to repurpose some of the content, then more choices will be available to learners. After obtaining skills and credits from various programmes and fields, learners can demonstrate their expertise in their e-portfolios.

Technology
It is worth noting that, among the top 10 T&L trends, 6 are tech-related, namely

  • Fully online courses
  • Mobile-enabled learning
  • Adaptive learning technology
  • Digital examinations
  • MOOC’s
  • Open Education Resources (OER’s)

This finding is certainly encouraging as the use of technology enhances teaching and learning and better prepares institutions for the challenges in higher education. Technology allows flexibility in learning and makes personalized learning possible. Learning management systems and grading tools such as Turnitin make it easier for teachers to assess students and provide feedback. The blending of face-to-face lectures with e-learning tools, such as Mentimeter and Kahoot!, caters for students’ diversified learning needs, which potentially enhances student engagement.

What about Hong Kong?
We are embracing the same challenges in Hong Kong and are working along similar lines. Here at HKU, we strive to cultivate students’ employability skills (e.g. cognitive flexibility, negotiation) and develop cross-disciplinary thinking through events such as Inter-professional Team-based Learning (IPTBL) and Girls4Tech. To enhance student engagement, we are constantly designing new in-class activities, apps and games. To ensure the best learning experience for our students, our efforts in course development is paralleled by research efforts in learning analytics.

More and more teachers are joining the ride in developing MOOCs (on edX and Coursera) and SPOCs to enrich students’ blended learning experience. To further open up learning opportunities to a wider range of learners, we are also exploring the possibilities of unbundling qualifications and MicroMasters and getting ourselves ready for e-portfolios. More initiatives will be in place to shape the T&L landscape in Hong Kong in response to challenges and trends in higher education.

What do you think? How will you respond to these challenges and trends? Share your views with us.

Further reading

  1. “Learning and Teaching Challenges in Higher Education in Australia: A View from the Top”, an Australian academic leadership study conducted by ASCILITE and Blackboard International in 2016

Improving Learning with Data: Lessons Learnt from a Learning Analytics Conference

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The use of technology in teaching and learning has generated learning data at a massive volume. But how can we maximize the impact of learning analytics (LA)? We explored this question in the 7th International Learning Design & Knowledge (LAK) Conference, themed Understanding, Informing & Improving Learning with Data. It was an exciting experience to find out how educators from around the world develop and deploy their LA tools. Some of our colleagues also presented their research on improving video instructions and their progress on developing learning progress dashboards in the conference.

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Discussions in the Morris J. Wosk Center for Dialogue

The conference featured 3 keynote sessions, 30 technical sessions and 16 pre-conference events. It covered various aspects of LA, from modeling students’ learning behaviour to institutional deployment of LA in practices, gathering ideas from cognitive science, learning design, educational psychology, learning technology, data science and other related fields.

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A highly engaging poster session where participants shared their ideas via 30-second pitch talks

Several major takeaways from the conference:
Students’ learning behavior, triangulated with their physiological data such as pulse, gesture, eye movement and brain wave, etc., reflect the process of learning, said keynote speaker Dr. Sanna Järvelä from the University of Oulu, Finland. Her research focused on using multimodal data to support the inquiry of learning. With guidance of existing learning theories, learning scientists could understand better the process and product of students’ learning, and provide suggestions for improvement accordingly.

To ensure effective analysis of students’ learning processes, an adaptive data-driven learning ecosystem should be established, as pointed out by Dr. Timothy McKay, keynote speaker from the University of Michigan. To establish this adaptive system, learning data needs to be continuously collected and integrated. This informs both students and teachers of students’ learning as an individual and in groups over an extensive period of time, throughout or even beyond their university life. In the University of Michigan, 10 years of learning data from different sources has been collected for establishing a learning system. This system advises teachers and students by providing relevant data to them. The purpose of putting data in people’s hands is to support decision making, motivate actions and guide behaviour change.

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Dr. Timothy McKay illustrating how data can be used for decision making

Just as research tools are always guided by research methodology, LA tools need to be student-centered and pedagogy-considered. This requires trust and understanding among teachers, system developers, user interface designers and behavioral scientists, whose expertise could jointly contribute to the sense-making of learning data.

For analytics to work well, the data collected from prior experience must be extensive, accurate and relevant. Some classes tend to be more suitable for deploying LA, such as large introductory courses with relatively mature course contents and classes where teachers have a clear understanding of students’ background and ability. The course should also involve a variety of instrumented learning activities, and the course team should constantly and gradually improve the course structure, content and assessments.

Finally, we must remind ourselves that data by itself is not all powerful until actions are taken in response to the analysis. We should also work to ensure that the collection of educational data and the use of LA tools are lawful and ethical.

Learning through gamification

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“Statistics point that 5 million gamers in the US spent more than 40 hours a week playing World of Warcraft in 2010 – which is [almost like] a full time job…” said Dr. Benny Ng at the ‘Benny and the Apps: Gamification and Student Learning’ seminar.

If you were given a choice, would you rather go to class or play games? Games may be the majority’s answer. Would a gamified curriculum motivate your learning?

Dr. Benny Ng gave a glimpse of why and how we can gamify teaching to engage students in ‘Benny and the Apps: Gamification and Student Learning’, a seminar held on April 5, 2017. The role of play and a 5-step gradual process to apply gamification were some highlights of the sharing.

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“How would you feel when facing obstacles in reality?” Participants in the seminar mostly gave negative answers. Yet, Dr. Ng believes that challenges can turn into a positive force in games, providing incentives for players to keep trying. After all, play provides a freedom to fail, experiment, fashion one’s identity and put in continuous effort. The role of play facilitates better and enjoyable learning.

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Answers by participants were directly reflected on a wordcloud through mentimeter

Participants were also asked what behaviours they hoped their students displayed in class, the most popular answers included ‘attentive, engaged, listen, motivated’. These match with characteristics of a gamer’s behaviour, such as persistency, risk-taking, attention to details, problem solving, urgent optimism, active learning, self-disciplined and resilience. In such a way, gamifying a class can motivate students to display the qualities mentioned by participants in the wordcloud.

A 5-step process to apply gamification was introduced:

  1. Understanding the target players and the context
    • Age group? Existent skill sets? Location? Duration?
  2. Defining Learning Objectives
    • Is the assessment rubric clear enough with actionable tasks?
  3. Structuring the experience
    • How can your content be broken down to stages/milestones?
  4. Identifying resources
    • What kind of gamifying resources may be needed?
  5. Applying game elements
    • What kind of self or social elements may be applicable? For example;
      Self: point, levels, time restriction; Social: leaderboards, interactive cooperation

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Changing the terminology of your syllabus can already be a start – what about gaining ‘experience points’ instead of ‘scores/marks’, completing ‘quests’ instead of ‘courseworks’, or ‘mission’ instead of ‘instructions’?

Take the risk to innovate and test new ideas, find the fun element in what you teach. If education becomes a joyful experience, students will ultimately be passionate to pursue life-long learning.

Want to give it a try? Contact us.

Kickstart your interactive online learning journey with us

Here is a chance for you to explore the endless possibilities of interactive online learning with us. HKU will be launching an open online course on the basics of e-learning and blended learning for students, teachers and staffs of all sectors on May 5. This 15-day course will lead you through design considerations and implementation skills for e-learning at three different scales. You will:
  • ​​​​Convert lecturing portions of traditional face-to-face course into video-lectures and design assessment components
  • Plan “face time”/active learning activities in blended learning to enhance achievement of intended learning outcomes
  • Describe the utilities of learning analytics in enhancing learning effectiveness
Date Session Topics
5 May Online Session 0
Online Session 1		 E-learning Ecosystem: Setting the Scene
Interactive Online Learning: Getting Started
12 May Face-to-Face Session A
(12pm – 2pm at HKU) 		Creating Your Lecture Video
12 May Online Session 2 Blended Learning: Teaching On-Campus
15 May Online Session 3 Learning Analytics: Using Learner’s Data to Improve Teaching
19 May Face-to-Face Session B
(12pm – 2pm at HKU) 		Analyzing Your Video
Embark your e-learning journey with us now!

A leap forward in Inter-professional Team-based Learning

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Inter-professional team-based learning (IPTBL) is an innovative teaching approach which aims at promoting peer-to-peer learning and collaborations across disciplines. In 2016, the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine piloted IPTBL with nearly 600 medical, health and social care students from HKU and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. This year, the organizing team scaled it up to serve more than 1,000 students from the following programmes: Chinese medicine, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and social work from HKU; and medical laboratory science, nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, radiography, and social work from PolyU.

The details of implementation are as follows:

Topic of Instructional Unit Date No. of participants
Anticoagulation Therapy January 21, 2017 247
Depression February 11, 2017 310
Fracture February 18, 2017 437
Multiple drugs February 25, 2017 347
Developmental delay March 18, 2017 192
Cancer March 25, 2017 501

What’s new this year?

(1) Venue: To facilitate group discussion and communication between teachers and students, IPTBL was conducted this year in Lecture Hall II at the Centennial Campus, a flat area with mobile chairs and strong WiFi connectivity.

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Before: IPTBL was conducted in a lecture theatre setting in the 2016 pilot round. Students in groups tended to face the stage most of the time.

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After: Groups were arranged in circles this year. This picture features 71 small groups of five to seven students seated in the spacious Lecture Hall II. The IPTBL team would like to thank colleagues from the Examinations Office, Estates Office and Learning Environment Services of ITS who made all the six sessions possible.

(2) Team progress chart: How to pace the 4-hour face-to-face IPTBL session is a big challenge. While the moderators and content experts had to be very conscious of the time, students also played an important role in moving the session forward. The newly added team progress chart displayed on one of the four screens in front of the hall, indicating whether a particular group had finished the assigned task – just like what a leaderboard does in online games. This provided motivation to students to complete their work in a timely manner, and also gave teachers some idea on which groups to interview in the interactive feedback session.

(3) Peer evaluation: Team-based learning creates many opportunities for students to learn with, from and about each other through intensive interaction and collaboration. During each session, they got to know each other’s expertise and communication style. Peer evaluation is a mechanism for them to provide honest feedback to their peer teammates in terms of four competencies: values/ ethics, roles/ responsibilities, communication, and teamwork. At the end of each session of this year’s IPTBL, students would fill in their peer evaluation scores in an online form. They would then be directed to another page which showed them, in real-time, the average scores that he/she received from other teammates.

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Dr. LK Chan explained to students how to fill out the online peer evaluation form. By the way, did you notice the balloons in the picture? They indicate the group numbers so that teachers/ facilitators could quickly locate where the teams are.

Exemplary facilitation skills
Team-based learning incorporates many elements of constructivist learning (Hrynchak & Batty, 2012). The teachers (content experts) spent much time to come up with carefully-crafted application exercises which can reveal common misconceptions and debatable topics from which students build new understandings. During the interactive feedback session, many teachers showed excellent skills in facilitating the discussion of a large group of students, such as:

  • not picking the team leader to present the team’s views;
  • asking open-ended questions with a focus on understanding the students’ rationale in picking a particular answer;
  • encouraging students to articulate their thoughts;
  • addressing uncertainties or disagreements;
  • providing a closure after each discussion; and
  • paying attention to teams or students who are not taking part (e.g., by inviting a range of teams to give their opinions).

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IPTBL is the Bronze Winner for Discipline Award (Life Sciences) in the prestigious QS Stars-Wharton Reimagine Education Awards 2016. The team celebrated the success after a briefing session in January 2017.

Way forward
The IPTBL team is now reviewing the feedback from students and teachers. They are thinking about improving the implementation in the following ways:

  • shortening the readiness tests in order to leave more time for discussion on the clinical scenario;
  • re-voicing students’ opinions when they contribute something that appears to be complex or not too well understood to students from other disciplines.
  • Adding new functions to the online platform for running IPTBL to provide more informative feedback to both the facilitators and students.

For those of you would like to learn more about IPTBL or contribute to it, please contact Dr. Fraide A. Ganotice, Jr., Program Coordinator at Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, via ganotc75@hku.hk. If you want to get to know the technical aspects of running large classes, you may reach out to the Technology-Enriched Learning Initiative (TELI) via enquiry@teli.hku.hk.

Look forward to IPTBL 2018!

Reference
Hrynchak, P. & Batty, H. (2012) The educational theory basis of team-based learning. Medical Teacher 34, 796-801.

Further reading

  1. Breaking through the Silos with Technology and Team-Based Learning
  2. Big Success at International Award to Reimagine Education
  3. Learning to Work in Teams: Interprofessional Learning for Health Students