Event Recap: KEEP eLearning Community of Practice 2021

To promote active learning using an eLearning platform, on 5 February 2021, KEEP successfully hosted its annual eLearning Community of Practice. The theme of this year’s event was “KEEP Learning for Life: Technology for Lifelong Learning!”. We received an overwhelming response in terms of registration and it was a packed virtual room of over 300 participants containing collaborators of KEEP and veterans who are in the eLearning field among 8 UGC-funded institutions and beyond.

To begin, Provost and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor Alan K.L. Chan and Professor Isabella Poon, along with the Principal Investigator of KEEP, Professor Irwin King opened up the event by sharing their views on how technology has shaped education the way it is.

In the first session, Professor Benson Yeh from the National Taiwan University gave his presentation on the topic "Gamification in Education: the Future of Learning". He shared his experiences on his award winning gamification platform, PaGamO, and other P2P schemes developed in his education life and explained how they advocated his teaching philosophy “For the students, By the students, Of the students". He highlighted the key of learning is “motivation” and believed that gamification will be part of the new paradigm shift for the education of the future.

The second session centered on teaching under the pandemic. A panel of teachers, including Ms. Joan Atienza from SEAMEO INNOTECH, Mr. Adam Forrester from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Dr. Theresa Kwong from the Hong Kong Baptist University, Mr. Alexander Markus Kling and Mr. Florian Tack from The Chinese University of Hong Kong shared their experience on how to successfully teach their students with KEEP and technology under the pandemic, how they use KEEP to manage their courses and projects, as well as future planning in engaging blended learning in their pedagogy.

“I believe that ‘great challenges present great opportunities.’ It is not going to be easy to teach and learn as the pandemic continues, but technology is supporting it.”, said Professor Irwin King. 

As he stated, KEEP will continue working on the development of technological support for eLearning in responding to any new challenges to come.

Lastly, KEEP would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the following individuals (in alphabetical order):

If interested, video recordings of the webinar are available on our YouTube channel whereas selected presentations and group photos are available for download here.