Symposium on Emerging Innovations and Evaluation of Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL) Pedagogies in Tertiary Education by PALMS

While the world keeps moving, its fast-changing pace demands educators to create innovations in education.

Pedagogic & Active Learning Mobile Solutions (PALMS) just hosted their annual

Symposium on Emerging Innovations and Evaluation of Technology Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL) Pedagogies in Tertiary Education on July 10, 2019.

Throughout the event, all academics, experts, and advocates had the chance to learn about the emerging innovations of technology-enhanced active learning pedagogies from a day of keynote addresses, panel discussions, and parallel sessions.

The first keynote speaker, Dr. Jenny Bergeron, Director of Educational Research and Evaluation from Harvard College Institutional Research, shared lessons of mindful innovation. She shared her practical experience participating in the evolution of learning technology adoption at Harvard University. The adoption, -which has been driven by the increasing tuition costs, evolving workforce demands, and diminishing resources-, is essential to create responsive change in education. In the presentation, she mentioned how educators there used data to drive responsible change, creating teaching innovations performed in Harvard’s classrooms.

After the sharing session from Dr. Bergeron, the participants enjoyed a buffet lunch with “Poster and Hands-On Session” on other UGC funded projects. These projects were shared by educators from different universities in Hong Kong. The projects included The CCGame Project, Capstone Ninja, Augmented Teaching and Learning Advancement System (ATLAS), and many more

The second keynote speaker, Professor Gwo-Jen Hwang, Chair Professor of Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, shared his mobile learning experience in Taiwan.

Dr. Hwang has served as the principal investigator of around 100 research projects funded by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan. He also serves as a reviewer and an editorial board member for around 30 journals of e-learning and technology of education. Starting from 2013, he has been responsible for a national mobile learning promotion program in Taiwan, which aims to assist high school teachers in developing teaching plans using mobile technologies.

After the sharing sessions, there were also hands-on workshop sessions of PALMS app projects. Educators from 4 different universities, CUHK, HKU, HKBU, and PolyU, actively took part in leading these sessions. The participants had the chance to learn about Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D Printing Technologies, Autograder WeBWork & Beyond, The-Cell-Game Teacher Interface, and many more.

Developed by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) and funded by the University Grants Committee (UGC), PALMS, the organizer of the symposium, is a teaching and learning project for Pedagogic & Active Learning Mobile Solutions that supports conceiving, designing and creating active teaching methods and their corresponding mobile solutions in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) related education.

Click here to to find out more about PALMS.