Category: e-learning

Quick start to use Moodle learning management system & Panopto lecture capture service, and online video tutorials

Message from Information Technology Services

Dear Colleagues,

Please note that all courses registered in SIS (Student Information System) have the correspondent electronic courses created in Moodle. Teachers, whose names are recorded in the Class Staff Information System (CSI) of SIS, can start uploading course materials. (Teachers can ask the Faculty contact point to add your name to CIS – details in http://moodle-support.hku.hk/contact/CSI) Teachers can enable students’ access to a Moodle course by clicking the “Enable for student access” link of the course in the “My e-learning” tab of HKU Portal.

Also, new services are rolled out on January 15:

(A) Two quick-start Moodle tips for teachers to set up e-Courses easily:

Quick Moodle course start-up video tutorials
Change the layout for new courses – using weekly layout instead of the default topic-based layout

(Details at http://moodle-support.hku.hk/moodle-tips-new-semester)

(B) Two new features in the one-stop e-learning hub under the “My e-learning tab” of HKU Portal

The link “Library reserve materials” allows easy access by both teachers and students to the reserve materials of a particular course, if there is any hosted in the Library system.

The link “Moodle and Panopto usage report” allows teachers to quickly access to the students’ usage statistics of Moodle features and Panopto lecture capture service (LCS) of a course. (Details in http://moodle-support.hku.hk/moodle-and-panopto-usage-report)

Besides the above,

http://moodle-support.hku.hk hosts the online tutorials, user guides and FAQ and other Moodle and LCS support information.

Training workshops on Moodle and LCS using Panopto are scheduled on 19 and 28 January 2015. You can find the details and register to attend at http://moodle-support.hku.hk/training/schedule.

If you have any questions or want more information about Moodle, Panopto and training courses, please feel free to email us at elearningteam@hku.hk.

Best Regards,

C.P. Lau
e-learning team

HKU04x: Making Sense of News is open for registration now

With social media and a 24/7 news cycle, how do we — as news consumers — make sense of what we hear and read? At a time when we are flooded with an abundance of information and disinformation, it is essential for each one of us to become a more discerning news consumer.

This six-week course will help you identify reliable information in news reports and become better informed about the world we live. We will discuss journalism from the viewpoint of the news audience.

Together, we will examine the following topics:

What makes news? The blurred lines between news, promotion and entertainment.
Why does news matter? Social sharing and the dynamics of the news cycles.
Who provides information? How to evaluate sources in news reports.
Where is the evidence? The process of verification.
When should we act? Recognizing our own biases.
How do we know what we know? Becoming an active news audience.

If you are interested in becoming a more discerning news consumer, please join us and sign up today.

Blog e-learning edX HKUx JMSC MOOC

Moodle and Panopto hands-on workshops for teachers

Message from Information Technology Services

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.

Reuse old course materials on Moodle

Course Code	Moodle Course Title	Date	Time	Venue	Registration
MOD-006	Moodle Hands-on Workshop on How to Re-use a Course and Its Materials	8 Jan, 2014 (Thu)	10:00am – 11:00am	KB110	Register
MOD-001	Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Setting Up a Moodle Course Website	8 Jan, 2014 (Thu)	11:30am – 12:30pm	KB110	Register

Introduction of e-learning Services in HKU

Course Code	Moodle Course Title	Date	Time	Venue	Registration
MOD-001	Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Setting Up a Moodle Course Website	19 Jan, 2014 (Mon)	10:00am – 11:00am	LG20	Register
PAN-001	Introduction to Lecture Capture Service using the “Panopto” system	19 Jan, 2014 (Mon)	11:30am – 12:30pm	LG20	Register

Setting up a new Moodle course

Course Code	Moodle Course Title	Date	Time	Venue	Registration
MOD-001	Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Setting Up a Moodle Course Website	28 Jan, 2014 (Wed)	10:00am – 11:00am	KB110	Register
MOD-002	Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Assignments, Choices and Quizzes	28 Jan, 2014 (Wed)	11:30am – 12:30pm	KB110	Register

Note:
(1) KB110 = Room 110, Knowles Building
LG20 = Room CPD-LG20, 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

Information Technology Services Moodle Panopto

HKU Successfully Concludes First MOOC, Work on Two Other Courses Gearing Up

Panel discussion on Ebola

The second week of December saw the official conclusion of the University of Hong Kong’s first massive open online course (MOOC) HKU01x: Epidemics. Led by Professor Gabriel M Leung, Dean of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, and infectious disease and public health experts from both the University of Hong Kong and international institutions such as the Harvard School of Public Health and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the course reached learners from 173 countries with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. In the end, more than 12 percent of the 10,290 enrolled learners earned a certificate of completion. This is a rather high rate as compared to the typical MOOC completion rate of around 5%, and goes to show the timeliness and quality of the course.

Prof David P. Y. Lung filming our next MOOC – The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia

As to the reasons that the learners complete the course to earn a certificate, adding to the resume, boosting job performance, supporting employment and school applications were often cited. In addition, personal satisfaction through a sense of achievement is also cited as a motivator for completing the course. For example, one learner reported that s/he finished the course “For my personal satisfaction that I can do it at age 77”.

In the beginning months of the new year, the HKU MOOC Working Group, in association with the HKU01x: Epidemics course team and the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU), will review the experience of our first MOOC and dive into the collected data for more insights that will help inform teaching and learning in both online and face-to-face settings here at HKU. Please watch out for information on salon and seminar sessions in the coming few months and make sure to join us for more in-depth discussions.

Prof Chad Hansen filming in the Common Core Lounge for Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought

While HKU01x: Epidemics is a undoubtedly a successful inaugural MOOC at this University measured by reach and impact, guided by the HKU MOOC Working Group, the EPSU instructional designers are working very closely with the course and video teams to ramp up work on three other courses, HKU02.1x: The Search for Vernacular Architecture of Asia, Part 1; HKUx03x: Humanity and Nature in Chinese Thought; and HKU04x: Making Sense of News, which are all scheduled to launch in the first half of 2015. More and updated information of these courses can be found at the HKU’s edX page at https://www.edx.org/school/hkux and this blog.

e-learning edX MOOC

e-learning News – Dec 2014

EPSU hosted a seminar to update the HKU community on progress with the development of the University’s four Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Over 70 colleagues from the various Schools, Departments, and University Offices attended the session.

Blog e-learning EPSU HKUx LMS MOOC Moodle Panopto

Rick Levin on MOOCs and the Internationalization of Higher Education

HKU had the fantastic opportunity to welcome the esteemed Professor Richard Levin (Coursera CEO and Yale President Emeritus) for a publically-open keynote speech on the 5^th December. In this captivating and anecdotal talk, Professor Levin drew on his two decades of experience as a leader in higher education to discuss his common challenges and lessons from his time at Yale, his views on the state of higher education in Asia, and his recent decision to join Coursera.

Underpinning much of his discussion of the progressive internationalization of higher education was his view that cross-cultural communication is essential for anyone who aspires to leadership. Testimony to this belief is the work that Professor Levin undertook in Yale to establish a programme for undergraduates in Beijing and increase participation in international work and study programmes; his involvement on the board of the National Committee on United States-China Relations; and the creation of the first liberal arts college in Asia: Yale-NUS (National University of Singapore).

Alongside this growing need for cross-cultural communication as an integral part of the higher education experience are the changing assumptions about how the world works. He noted that international understanding is a core part of the 21^st Century curriculum – a curriculum which has, to a large extent, become internationalized ‘by itself’. He drew on the example of one of the initial courses which he taught in 1974 on the topic of Industrial Organisation in a North American context. He reflected that, from a contemporary perspective, the scope of this course would no longer be sufficient as industries rarely exist within one nation. Multinational communication and industry is central to many of today’s workplaces. Perhaps this insight is one of the factors which led to Professor Levin’s pioneering of online learning environments which enable learners to communicate across contexts and potentially across cultures, too.

After a fascinating exploration of several of his experiences experimenting with online learning spaces in higher education, Professor Levin discussed how he saw the role of Coursera in providing quality education to a global audience. With more than 10 million learners, 875 courses, and 115 partners, this platform is certainly not short of numbers and, by extension, is likely to embody a huge range of cultures, perspectives and areas of inquiry. It seems logical therefore that any discussion today on the internationalization of higher education mention MOOCs and the way in which they can leverage interaction and learning within and across cultures through the lens of subject areas scaffolded by reputable tertiary institutions.

Professor Levin’s passion for this exciting new space was clearly shared by the audience, which consisted of students, faculty, leadership alumni, UGC, school principals, amongst other stakeholders. Questions sparked discussions on how Professor Levin saw the future of Coursera; censorship and quality issues; the possible changing emphases of professoriate evaluation as a result of MOOCs; and considerations of assessment reliability for those considering offering credit-bearing MOOCs.

This inspiring keynote gave us all the opportunity to reflect on the world in which we live from the perspective of educators and learners. In order to gain insight into the scope and impact of MOOCs, one need not look past the experience of one of Professor Levin’s colleagues who calculated that, in his first MOOC offering, he had a completion rate of 20,000 learners; around 2.5 times the number of learners he had taught in face-to-face mode over his career! A sincere thanks to Professor Levin and the Coursera team for so generously sharing your experiences and insights with us.

A post from the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU)

Coursera e-learning MOOC

From Silicon Valley to HKU: Conversations with Mariel Reed

On a bright December day, we at HKU were lucky to have two opportunities to meet and talk to Mariel Reed, Coursera Partnership Manager and Co-Founder of Lean In Beijing.

In the first session, Mariel led a discussion with HKU academic staff in which she shared insights into what motivates faculty members to produce Massive Open Online Courses, what Coursera as a MOOC provider learns from its academic collaborators and how it takes advantage of this knowledge to improve and innovate on its platform. While Mariel shared some fascinating examples of Faculty motivations relating to MOOCs, three main areas emerged. Firstly, Mariel talked about professors making a social impact – for example, teaching more learners on one MOOC than in a lifetime of face-to-face lectures. A second motivation stems from a desire to improve teaching and learning with one famous example provided by Andrew Ng, a co-founder of Coursera, whose own teaching benefitted enormously from preparing and delivering his groundbreaking Machine Learning MOOCs. The third and final motivation that Mariel highlighted was the role that delivering MOOCs can play in academic staff’s professional enhancement, with an example of an Ohio State professor whose tenure track progress benefitted from a higher post-MOOC profile.

Along with these insights from faculty, Mariel also shared upcoming Coursera innovations, the highlight being ‘courses on demand’ which seeks to disrupt the current MOOC paradigm – in which the majority of courses mirror their face-to-face counterparts in having defined start and end dates – and replace it with students setting their own pace for study, perhaps finally evidencing the ‘anytime, anywhere’ claim that is often made for the benefits of e-learning. This coupled with Coursera’s continued focus on mobile learning marks exciting times indeed for online learners.

Mariel’s second session of the day was very different but equally rewarding. In ‘My East-West Adventures’, a talk primarily designed for students but with much of interest for faculty too, Mariel reflected on the things she cares about the most and spoke of the lessons learned from her experiences. One guiding and thought-provoking principle in Mariel’s life has been the idea that when considering your path in life, instead of focusing on what you want to do, focus on what problems you can solve. She applied this to her own life’s journey, firstly the leap from Washington D.C. to teaching English and Business at Shihezi University in Xinjiang, in which the issue that was at the forefront of Mariel’s thoughts was the importance of US-China relations. A second concern of Mariel is the development of people and she had a chance to work directly on this in her time in Beijing, co-founding Lean In Beijing which focuses on roles of professional women, and Beijing Commons, a volunteer organization that brings new ideas to life. The third guiding theme of Mariel’s life is that of universal access to quality education, which provides a link between previous teaching posts and her current work for Coursera back in Silicon Valley.

These ideas resonated with staff and students alike, who found Mariel’s vision inspiring and shared their own problems, thoughts and views on future growth. This session was much more ‘conversation’ than ‘presentation’ and was a perfect counterbalance to the previous information-rich seminar; here, participants had time to speak and reflect, and their willingness to share the personally-held beliefs is testament to the relaxed atmosphere that was created. Overall, two highly engaging talks from Mariel – we hope she comes back to visit HKU soon.

A post from the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU)

Coursera e-learning Mariel Reed MOOC

edx/EPSU Bootcamp

On Thursday 25 November, Kathy Pugh (edX Vice President of Education Services) and Remy Mansfield (edX Education Program Manager) sat down with members of the HKU Working Group on MOOCs and the EPSU to discuss MOOC development – past, present and future. Kathy, spearheading Education Services globally for edX, enthusiastically explained how edX has been consistently strengthening its position in China. Remy, who was already known to the EPSU as the face of edX training webinars, announced that he would be assuming the role of HKU’s edX Programme Manager and spoke about some exciting developments on course design and new features of the platform.

Firstly edX is preparing to roll out mobile device support which will enable learners to take their studies with them as they travel. Kathy and Remy also spoke of improvements in the learner experience for those based in China, such as consolidation of the video-delivery process which should enhance the Chinese learner experience and has the potential for opening up the platform. In addition to the learner-focused innovations, edX also pointed to how they will be streamlining the video production process for MOOC developers, good news for all of those involved in video production for courses. The EPSU took advantage of this great opportunity to discuss other potential improvements to the platform with Kathy, such as increased flexibility of activity types and more interactive exercises. A fruitful discussion ensued, leaving all parties positive about the developmental roadmap.

All in all, a positive discussion that was good for edX, good for HKU and great news for our online learners.

A post from the e-learning Pedagogical Support Unit (EPSU)

e-learning edX MOOC

Hands-on Workshop on Learning Management System Moodle & Lecture Capture Services Panopto

Message from Information Technology Services

Dear Teachers,

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

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

Moodle Workshops – Setting up a new Moodle course

Course Code	Moodle Course Title	Date	Time	Venue	Registration
MOD-001	Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Setting Up a Moodle Course Website	11 Dec, 2014 (Thu)	10:00am – 11:00am	KB110	Register
MOD-002	Moodle Hands-on Workshop on Assignments, Choices and Quizzes	11 Dec, 2014 (Thu)	11:30am – 12:30pm	KB110	Register

Panopto Workshops – Lecture Capture Services in HKU

Course Code	Panopto Course Title	Date	Time	Venue	Registration
PAN-001	Introduction of Panopto Lecture Video Capturing Solution	17 Dec, 2014 (Wed)	10:00am – 11:00am	KK101	Register
PAN-002	Edit, Share and Output Panopto Video Recording	17 Dec, 2014 (Wed)	11:30am – 12:30pm	KK101	Register

Note:
(1) KB-110 = Room 110, Knowles Building
KK-101, Room 101, K.K. Leung Building

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, please feel free to email: e-learningTeam@hku.hk

Best Regards,

Ada Yau
e-learning Team
Information Technology Services

Information Technology Services Moodle Panopto

What We’re Learning from MOOCs (and the Faculty that Make Them)

Message from Working Group on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

ONLINE REGISTRATION

Abstract
During this discussion, Mariel will dig into the motivations for faculty creating MOOCs and the value of courses to faculty and students. She will share major lessons that Coursera as a company has learned from faculty, and how Coursera is using these lessons to adjust its platform. Finally, she will highlight some general best practices and areas for innovation and experimentation in MOOCs.

Speaker: Ms. Mariel Reed
Coursera Partnership Manager and Co-Founder of Lean In Beijing
Time: 5 Dec 3:00pm – 4:30pm
Venue: 230, 2/F, Knowles Building

About the speaker
Mariel Reed manages Coursera’s university partnerships with schools in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. She has many aliases; she’s known as “Mari” in English, 李曼玉 in Mandarin, and “Mad Dog” from her pirating days on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She was raised by the sea but after studying International Politics at Georgetown University, she headed to teach and trace the Silk Road in Xinjiang, China, through Princeton in Asia. From there, she navigated the international philanthropy and health education landscapes from Beijing and cut her teeth as a community builder. A co-founder of Lean In Beijing, she’s passionate about women’s empowerment. She has deep faith in the power of education and the development of people, and is excited to be at Coursera helping to push the boundaries of what is possible in education around the world.

ONLINE REGISTRATION

Coursera Mariel Reed MOOC