Moodle and Panopto hands-on workshops for teachers

Message from Information Technology Services

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Dear Teachers,

We are pleased to organize Learning Management System (LMS) – Moodle and Lecture Capture Services (LCS) – Panopto hands-on workshops for you to familiar with our e-learning services available at HKU.

The following upcoming hands-on workshops in November are now open for your registration. The course details can be found at http://moodle-support.hku.hk/training/ITS-all

Please register by clicking the “Register” hyperlinks below. The number of seats is limited. After successful registration, if you cannot attend, please cancel the registration to release the reserved seat for other colleague.

Setting up a new course and grading function on Moodl

Course Code Moodle Course Title Date Time Venue Registration
MOD-001 Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Setting Up a Moodle Course Website 12 Feb, 2015 (Thu) 10:00am – 11:00am KB110 Register
MOD-003 Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Grades 12 Feb, 2015 (Thu) 11:30am – 12:30pm KB110 Register

Introduction of Lecture Capture Service in HKU

Course Code Moodle Course Title Date Time Venue Registration
PAN-001 Introduction to Lecture Capture Service using the “Panopto” system 16 Feb, 2015 (Mon) 10:00am – 11:00am CPD2.77 Register
PAN-002 Edit, Share and Output Panopto Video Recording 16 Feb, 2015 (Mon) 11:30am – 12:30pm CPD2.77 Register

Assessment tools on Moodle

Course Code Moodle Course Title Date Time Venue Registration
MOD-002 Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Assignments, Choices and Quizzes 26 Feb, 2015 (Thu) 10:00am – 11:00am KB110 Register
MOD-005 Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Turnitin and GradeMark 26 Feb, 2015 (Thu) 11:30am – 12:30pm KB110 Register

Note:
(1) KB110 = Room 110, Knowles Building
CPD2.77 = Room 2.77, Central Podium (CPD), Centennial Campus

(2) If you have taken a Moodle hands-on course offered by the ITS, we recommend you follow up with an e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU) workshop and/or a Faculty of Education/ Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE) seminar.

The EPSU of the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) offers pedagogically focused e-learning workshops, which leverage the central Moodle platform to enable good teaching practices. These workshops focus on teaching approaches and good teaching practices, complement the Moodle courses offered by the ITS and the Moodle seminars offered by the Faculty of Education/CITE, which tend to focus on innovative teaching practice using the new features available in Moodle.

e-learning workshops by EPSU/CETL
http://www.cetl.hku.hk/professional-learning/

e-learning seminars by the Faculty of Education/CITE
http://www.cite.hku.hk/news.php?category=upcoming

For more information and inquiry on Moodle and Panopto training and support, feel free to email: e-learningTeam@hku.hk

Best Regards,

Ada Yau
e-learning Team
Information Technology Services

Notes from The 5th Education and Research Technology Forum

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For one and a half days, pioneers in MOOC technologies, academics who teach and research about MOOCs, university administrators and instructional designers converge at the 5th Education and Research Technology Forum to discuss new developments and exchange ideas in online and open education in higher education settings.

Held at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the 5th Education and Research Technology Forum aimed to address the integrative aspects of information and communications technologies and services at the University level. Some of the highlights include:

Instructor experiences in teaching MOOCs

King Chow and Sean McMinn from HKUST reflected on their experience teaching and researching about MOOCs and discussed the rewards and challenges of teaching a course on massive scales. According to these speakers, among the rewards of teaching a MOOC are the reach and impact the courses can have on an unprecedented and global level, room for innovation, understanding learners through data and research; and among the challenges are how to engage students see efficiently and effectively, and how to ensure that MOOCs provide a quality learning experience that meets individual learners’ needs.

University strategies regarding MOOCs

As universities invest in and experiment with open education on a massive scale, they also form different strategies based on their institutional perspectives and needs. HKUST, for example, according to Professor T C Pong, sees MOOCs as a platform for collaboration with other institutions, a way to expand on the university’s existing models of teaching and learning (e.g. flipped courses or programs), and recruiting top students from around the world.

Peking University sees MOOCs as an example of the Internet maturing to effectively support large-scale educational activities, and is making a significant effort to lead the way in using technology to improve teaching and learning, and help shape the future of higher education in China.

Professor Ricky Kwok, Associate Vice President of Teaching and Learning, shared HKU’s perspective on using MOOCs to benefit teaching and learning at the University. HKU sees MOOC as one part of the teaching and learning ecosystem that is enriched by technologies. It can serve as a testbed for pedagogical innovations, a catalyst for institutional change, a tool to enable initiatives such as overseas immersion, exchange, internationalization and collaboration, and a means to achieving totality of learning.

MOOC technologies

Present at the forum were also two of the leading MOOC technology pioneers, edX and XuetangX. edX’s CEO Anant Agarwal spoke about how edX operates as a non-profit venture, the impact it has had so far in providing quality learning to people all over the world, and some of the new technologies that edX is going to implement on their platform. XuetangX aims to create an ecosystem based on Open edX for China, and has been innovating to achieve this goal on a number of fronts including infrastructure (e.g., data platform), technology (e.g. mobile apps), and process (e.g. course licensing).

Throughout the forum, the participants’ energy and enthusiasm over the possibilities new technologies such as MOOC bring were palpable. It concluded with the hosting organization, HKUST, sharing their observations of trends in higher education teaching and learning and participants discussing collaboration ideas and possibilities.

Sir Eric Thomas: The Impact of Online Education is Enormous

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Professor Sir Eric Thomas, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol (UoB), shared his vision of MOOCs during the public lecture entitled “What Defines a Global University” on 12 January 2015, which brought together members of the Heads of Universities Committee (HUCOM), UGC, HKU students, staff, alumni and friends.

“A global university will have global distribution of its educational materials and programmes,” Sir Thomas said. Citing “Cracking Mechanics: Further Maths for Engineers” at UoB as an example, he told the audience that the course has attracted 12,000 enrollees to date – 6 times of the Engineering student population at Bristol – creating a much greater impact than achieved in the past.

Not only are MOOCs giving institutions many opportunities to advertise their excellence, they are also helping teachers to reverse-engineer the existing curriculum and enrich pedagogies.

In the Q&A, Sir Thomas emphasized that proper resourcing ought to top the agenda for aspiring universities. “I think they need to invest in [MOOC], this is about something that is central to your education provision in the same way as quality assurance is, assessment is, and curriculum design is,” he continued, “so that the faculty don’t believe that they’re having to do it for free. They are doing it as part of their work as a faculty member, for which they will receive the appropriate reward – in promotion as well as anything else.”

It was a stirring experience to hear from Sir Thomas on how much potential in MOOCs was yet to be tapped. We are just on the beginning of a learning curve.

Video (highlights): http://uvision.hku.hk/playvideo.php?mid=18951

Video (full lecture): http://uvision.hku.hk/playvideo.php?mid=18950

JMSC to launch online news literacy course for a global audience

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A new online course to be launched by the JMSC this spring will aim to teach the public how to critically evaluate news and news sources, to better understand and respond to issues and events that affect their everyday lives.

The Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, titled Making Sense of News, will be available to students worldwide on edX, the non-profit online education portal founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.  The six-week course will begin on 19 May, and the JMSC is now accepting student registrations.

The content has been developed by two JMSC faculty members, Assistant Professor Masato Kajimoto and Assistant Lecturer Anne Kruger, who will also present the online lectures.

Click here if you cannot access Youtube

Kajimoto said the course will aim to show students how to examine the validity of information in news reports and social communications, with special emphasis on information disseminated online, where unsubstantiated rumours and inaccurate information often circulate.  The course among other things will examine recent cases where the sharing of unconfirmed rumours has had serious consequences.
Kajimoto said it is vitally important for people everywhere to develop such skills, and to consider the potential consequences of responding quickly to news reports before they are verified.

He said although all members of the public should be able to benefit from the course, it should prove particularly valuable for undergraduate university and middle school students.

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“These students have grown up with social media as an integral part of their lives, and many rely on platforms like Twitter and Facebook for their news,” Kajimoto said.  “The recent Occupy Central protests in Hong Kong “demonstrated how quickly false rumours can be spread (via social media) and how these rumours get taken as fact.  Social media now have dramatic impact on people’s actions.”

Classes will consist of video clips and interactive exercises. Participants will be required to spend two to three hours per week watching the lectures, reading material recommended by the lecturers, completing assignments, and discussing the subject with other class members on the online portal.

“I expect our students to be the future decision-makers, and oftentimes people make decisions based on what they hear in news reports,” Kajimoto said.  “If they can learn how to pause and think about the power of disseminating information on social media through this course, that’s a good thing.”

To register for the course, visit the Making Sense of News registration page on edX.

A MOOC on Mapping: features and insights

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On Friday 23 January, Anthony Robinson (Assistant Professor, The Pennsylvania State University) delivered a CITE-organised talk where he walked the audience through the key features and insights from his highly-engaging MOOC, Maps and the Geospatial Revolution.

Dr Robinson (also Director for Online Geospatial Education, John A. Dutton e-Education Institute) began by dispelling the misconception that MOOCs are the same as all online courses.  ‘Traditional’ online credit-bearing classes are paid, relatively small-scale, and have a high instructor:learner ratio (and thus enable a broad range of assessment types).  MOOCs, on the other hand, are by definition open-access, ‘massive’-scale, and have a low instructor:learner ratio (requiring a rethink of traditional assessment approaches).  These fundamental differences between pre-MOOC era online classes and MOOCs themselves indicate the need for MOOC development teams to shift their paradigms to address learner needs in these vastly new learning environments.

So what were the key motivations behind Anthony Robinson’s MOOC on mapping?  He noted 5 ‘Es’: to encourage new audiences; to enhance visibility of existing online programmes; to explore this new method of instruction; and to evaluate new research possibilities.  By aiming to create a gateway experience into mapping for learners and develop the teaching, learning and research work, the paradigm employed in this learning environment was clearly different to that of the traditional programmes offered in his context.

How did Anthony Robinson structure course content and assessments within his MOOC?  His course consisted of text and graphics developed to teach core competencies, supported by two short lecture videos for each week.  He noted that the content of the videos, which he produced himself in his garage, was supplementary to the other input material, as his experience with online learning indicates that providing only video input is likely to provide a suboptimal learning experience.  His assessments consisted of weekly quizzes, discussion activities, peer review, and a final exam.

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How did he interact with his learners during the running of the MOOC?  Dr Robinson emphasised the key importance of interacting with learners during the running of the course.  He did this by engaging with forum discussions, introducing an ‘ask me anything’ activity, providing weekly discussion digests, and seeding several off-topic forums to add scope to the discussion.

What does Dr Robinson see as the three main priorities when developing a MOOC?  One, interact with learners during the course delivery.  Two, design the course in a way which engages learners and don’t be afraid to innovate.  Three, target the competencies and learning objectives which underpin your course.

Since the first MOOC in 2012, thousands of MOOCs have been offered to millions of learners.  So where will MOOCs fit in to higher education a few years down the line?  He believes that MOOCs are one option for distance education and will not replace everything else.  Traditional online courses will continue to serve as a high-engagement option which better suit higher-level topics.  So, whilst MOOCs are not likely to supplant more tradition offerings, they are likely to foster learners who are price-sensitive and demand more options than ever before.

For Dr Robinson’s presentation powerpoint, please click here.

CETL EPSU Seminar – Educational Video Production: Design principles for meaningful learning

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Organized by e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit, CETL

Speakers: Mr Steve Roberts (Instructional Designer, CETL, HKU)
Date : 11th February, 2015 (Wednesday)
Time : 12:45pm – 2:00pm
Venue : Room 321, Run Run Shaw Building

It would take an individual over 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global internet networks each month in 2018, with video consisting of 79% of all consumer internet traffic in 2018 (Cisco, 2014). Whilst this vast access and consumption of video by no means implies viewers are engaging with or learning from high-quality content, it does indicate that video is a dominant online modality for information ‘chunking’ and broadcasting. In light of this ubiquity of video, the ease in which technology can be leveraged to create viewing environments, and its potential as a medium to provide input, higher education (HE) has been integrating video into teaching and learning at a rapidly growing rate. Flipped classrooms, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), blended-learning classrooms and distance courses are a few of the many contexts in which video is employed as a tool for learning.

But, given this huge uptake, perhaps it is worth pausing to consider the nature of the videos which are being produced. Are we sufficiently reflecting on questions such as: What is the difference between video for education and entertainment? What is the impact of visuals and audio, and the relationship between these modalities, on student cognition and learning? Does adding graphics to spoken words help students’ learning? Is talking over PowerPoint slides more or less effective than a talking head alone? Does adding on-screen written text, which parallels spoken text, support or hinder learning?

If you are curious about the answers to these questions, join this seminar where we will discuss approaches to multimedia design; explore foundational ideas on cognitive load and working memory; collaboratively analyse multimedia design principles to aid cognition and learning by looking at several examples; and finally reflect on the relevance of these theories and approaches to our own contexts.

About the Speakers:

Steve Roberts has experience in a range of local and international contexts as a teacher, teacher trainer and courseware designer. He is currently working as part of the EPSU team to develop Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and provide pedagogical support to faculties integrating technology into their teaching and learning environments. His research interests include the potential role of digital technologies for communication and education in international development.

Sandwiches will be served with coffee and tea.

For information on registration, please contact:
Ms Ivy Lai , CETL
Phone: 3917 8996; Email: laichun2@hku.hk.

CITE & Faculty of Education Joint Seminar – Teaching Cartography at Scale in a Massive Open Online Course

Message from Centre for Information Technology in Education within the Faculty of Education

CITE Seminar Series 2014/2015

CITE & Faculty of Education Joint Seminar – Teaching Cartography at Scale in a Massive Open Online Course

Date: 23 January 2015 (Friday)
Time: 12:45 pm – 2:00 pm
Venue: Room 101, 1/F., Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Prof. Anthony C. Robinson, Assistant Professor, The Pennsylvania State University
Chair: Dr. Timothy HEW, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, HKU

About the Seminar
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become an important trend in distance education. By their nature, MOOCs provide increased global access to college courses without tuition cost to students, and they challenge traditional models for higher education which emphasize high levels of one-on-one contact between instructors and students. In this presentation I describe experiences from designing, developing, and teaching the first MOOC on Mapping. The course, called Maps and the Geospatial Revolution, has been taught twice through Coursera, a major MOOC platform. More than 75,000 students from over 200 countries have enrolled in the course to date, signaling a large demand for basic cartographic education. This talk will reflect on the wide range of challenges and opportunities regarding MOOCs for geographic education and research, including the experience of teaching a class at scale to novices around the world.

About the Speaker
Dr. Anthony Robinson is Assistant Professor, Director for Online Geospatial Education programs, and Assistant Director for the GeoVISTA research center in the Department of Geography at Penn State University. In the former role, Robinson directs Penn State’s Online Geospatial Education efforts, including its Master of GIS and Post-Baccalaureate GIS Certificate programs, which have served over 5000 students with more than 30 courses since 1999. Robinson teaches Maps and the Geospatial Revolution on Coursera, a MOOC that has enrolled over 75,000 students from more than 200 countries. For the GeoVISTA Center, Robinson’s research focuses on the science of interface and interaction design for geographic visualization software tools. He has developed interface design and usability assessment methods for integrating geographic visualization tools with work in epidemiology, crisis management, and homeland security.

Please register at
http://www.cite.hku.hk/news.php?id=540&category=seminar

Think Big in Teaching with MOOCs

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On 15 Jan 2015, CETL organized a one-day programme ‘Introduction to Teaching and Learning @ HKU’ for teaching staff who are new to teaching at HKU. Our new Associate Vice-President Professor Ricky Kwok, also the Chairman of the HKU Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Working Group, was invited to give a brief session on the recent development of MOOCs. Professor Kwok talked about why developing a MOOC will give teachers unprecedented outreaching opportunities and how it will enable the use of analytics to learn about learning. He also shared the challenges and difficulties of developing a MOOC, and the lessons we have learned.

To grab the starter kit and learn more about MOOC development @ HKU, click here.

To learn more about HKU’s MOOC offerings, click here.

The making of HKU’s Second Massive Open Online Course HKU02x

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The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia, Part I, is HKU’s second Massive Open Online Course, to be launched in April, 2015.

This 5-week introductory course is for those who would like to explore and be fascinated by vernacular architecture. It covers topics such as native building materials, the interaction between people, culture and the vernacular, as well as the vernacular landscape, and it has a special emphasis on the built heritage of Asia.

It is a unique course in many ways. For example, the instructor, Professor David P.Y. Lung (Professor of Architecture, Lady Edith Kotewall Professor in the Built Environment), not only presents the course materials himself, but he also involves experts from both inside and outside of HKU in panel discussions, onsite interviews, studio interviews, etc. to share a diverse set of views and experiences.

Click here to watch the trailer if you cannot access Youtube

In addition, one of the most unique characteristics of this course is its visual richness. In order to present the content in a most direct and impactful way, the course makes great use of images and videos of the buildings, landscapes, rituals, etc. To gather the visual materials, the course staff often finds themselves in the field taking location images and videos.

The goal of the course is to help learners from around the world to develop an appreciation of the values and meanings of vernacular architecture in their local environments, and to apply what they learned in the course to protect and preserve their local built environment. With inputs from a diverse set of experts, visual richness, and well-designed learning activities, this course is shaping up to be another high quality, impactful learning experience brought to the world by the University of Hong Kong.

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For further information about and to register for the course, please go to here