The proposed project is based upon creating an App related to an introductory course on historical theory. The course grounds incoming students to CUHK’s Department of History in fundamental concepts tied to the study of historical investigation, and accordingly introduces and explains basic abstract notions and practices associated with historical inquiry. Within this structured pedagogical framework students are trained to recognize how both theoretical and pragmatic procedures affect comprehension of historical processes, people, and events.

The proposal is tendered so as to offer an interactive learning experience as part of the course’s compulsory fieldtrip. It, thus, is composed to establish a schooling opportunity away from the classroom in which skills central to historical investigation, explanation, and understanding, e.g. critical thinking capacities and aptitudes tied to the use of sources, can be developed. Accordingly the proposal is established with a number of objectives: to grant learners a structured out-of-classroom educational experience that supplements training exercises introduced in lecture and tutorial scenarios; to bestow a practical opportunity to produce deep learning, in so doing boosting student knowledge, skills, and learning motivation; to utilise eLearning as part of course assessment and student learning self-assessment. Designing an App to give learners instantaneous feedback serves two significant purposes: it makes them immediately aware of weaknesses in how they grasp History; it grants enriched understanding of to learn, and so do historical inquiry.

Ultimately, the fieldtrip App is designed to sanction prescribed learning outcomes. Enabling learners on their phones or tablets to follow a demarcated trail in the Central District they will be encouraged to click on old photographs and maps, use weblinks, and answer questions (on pop ups) so that they can think, analyse, and explain Hong Kong’s past. As such pop ups will be employed not only to quiz students about their factual knowledge, but owing to the different nature of questions, they will be asked these will collectively act as a structured guide to consider and evaluate how historical thinking is formed, how meaning is attributed to historical ‘facts’, and how critical appreciation is central to comprehending not only what happened in the past, i.e. how and why it happened in that particular way.

In this project, we have developed an anatomy teaching courseware named Di-Ana Teach. It serves as an electronic dissection guide that can be integrated with ‘floating touch’ screen technology through which students can control certain things by hovering their finger up to 20 mm above them without even touching the display. With this distinctive feature, students can easily navigate the courseware material through touchless control during dissection practicals, enhancing their learning experience in class.

The teaching content of Di-Ana Teach can be uploaded to The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s eLearning System, where students can obtain the learning material easily before and after dissertation for learning and revision purposes. It serves as a teaching tool that assists students in solving problems on their own.

Di-Ana Teach facilitates class activity while enhancing self-learning experiences. Touchless screen technology is a novel and essential learning tool in anatomy dissection, providing personalized teaching material that allows students to blend their learning techniques. More importantly, it gives our team the opportunity to explore different teaching media that enhance the teaching and learning experiences of teachers and students alike. In this pilot study, one topic in the dissection of the lower limb has been selected to evaluate the feasibility of expanding teaching content in Di-Ana Teach.

This smart phone-based courseware was constructed to strengthen the functions of the laboratory classes and lectures for the courses BIOL4510, BIOL3570 and UGEB2350. It aims to engage the students to learning experiences of botanical authentication by a database and interactive interfaces of mobile pages and webpages. Five learning spots in CUHK campus were designated as major sites of learning. Through the handy tools, students can review basic information of the plants and also instantly acquire sufficient interactive bioinformation of these plants through internet. As a result, significant synergistic effects of these courseware-based trainings can effectively enhance students’ interest and capacity in various science and application topics which are crucial to their further studies and career planning.

In Dialogue with Humanity is one of the two core components of the General Education Foundation Programme (GEF). Students enrolled in this course have to read twelve classic texts in one semester. Most students, especially those who are not familiar with history, literature and philosophy, have great difficulties in reading and comprehending the classical texts. The mobile app DAIMON aims at helping students tackle their weekly reading assignment. The app consists of interactive multiple-choice questions at various levels of complexity and difficulty: Questions of level 1 are simple and straightforward, focusing on the main themes. Questions of level 2 are divided into different sections according to the passages of a text. As a rule, questions of this level are more specific. They serve as reading companion to help students better understand the text and to have a clear idea of their progress of reading. Level 3 questions are designed as quizzes. They are not bound to any specific passages. Students can attempt a quiz at different phases of reading as a means of self-assessment. In addition, most of the multiple-choice questions are supplied with short explanatory feedback to deepen their understanding. In the second version released in September 2015, mini-dictionaries containing brief explanatory entries and recordings of names and terms read in original languages were added to enhance the teaching function of the mobile app.