Online Teaching and Learning: Challenges and Opportunities during COVID-19
Online Teaching and Learning: Challenges and Opportunities during COVID-19
Speakers:
Dr. Cheung Hang Cheong Derek (Office of University General Education)
Dr. Han Dongkun (Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering)
Ms. Judy Lo (Head of Academic Support Services, Information Technology Services Centre)
Date: 27 April 2021
Time: 11:00 am – 12:30 pm
Venue: ZOOM
Language: English
2020–21 has been a year of challenge and change. Teachers and teaching units in CUHK have put tremendous efforts in adapting to online teaching and learning during the pandemic time. Discussion-based lessons are greatly challenged in respect of interaction between teacher and students and communication among students. Apart from that, hands-on skills training is of essential importance in many science and engineering related general education courses, like robotics, electronics, mechanics and renewable energy. A major concern in online/distance education is how to overcome the problems associated with laboratory components. Besides, various IT support teams in the University have been providing a lot of assistance to both teachers and students on online teaching during the pandemic. What new instruments will be introduced in the future?
In this GE Lunch Seminar, we invite Dr. Cheung Hang Cheong Derek, Dr. Han Dongkun, and Ms. Judy Lo to share their experience of online teaching. Dr. Derek Cheung will share his ZOOM lesson design, which attempts to enhance students’ engagement in the ZOOM discussion of the General Education Foundation course UGFN 1000 “In Dialogue with Nature”. Learning support tools that can facilitate students’ independent learning will also be introduced.
Dr. Han Dongkun will demonstrate three eLearning pedagogical approaches he introduced to address the issue of hands-on skills training at different levels. Firstly, flipped online laboratory is proposed and implemented in UGEB1307 “Energy and Green Society”. The basic underlying idea is that an online (synchronous) laboratory could be conducted with the help of flipped (asynchronous) laboratory instructions for students to make solar powered cars. Secondly, based on the flipped online laboratory, an improved version flipped online laboratory plus is developed and implemented in UGEB2303 “Robots in Action”. The main modification is that the online lab is constructed based on a real robotic laboratory with real robots under remote control technique. Finally, a further polished version, flipped online laboratory pro, is generated. The key distinct features are: 1. It makes unmanned robotic lab possible; 2. It incorporates automatic assessment technique on students’ performance in the lab; 3. AI-based learning assistance and personalized education are provided for studying computer programming based on big-data analysis. Dr Han will also demonstrate the effectiveness of the three versions of flipped online laboratory in the existing general education courses.
Ms. Judy Lo will go through a few common challenges GE teachers face when they deliver real-time online classes during COVID-19 and share some support resources and services available to help teachers (and students) cope with the challenges. In addition to ZOOM, a few new IT solutions have been or will be offered for teachers to try during COVID-19. Ms. Lo will briefly go through these new IT solutions (e.g. Respondus Monitor, Gradescope, Piazza, Proctorio, Examsoft) with the audience and share how teachers can try out these new solutions if they are interested.
Speakers' Bio
Dr. Cheung Hang Cheong Derek obtained his Bachelor of Science and PhD degrees in Biochemistry from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a lecturer at the Office of University General Education and is primarily responsible for teaching one of the General Education Foundation courses UGFN1000 In Dialogue with Nature. Through interactive dialogue in class, he strives to cultivate his students to becoming a reflective person who can scrutinize his/her underlying values, beliefs, and presuppositions from multiple perspectives. As a general education teacher, Dr. Cheung is active in developing online micro-modules and educational mobile applications to meet the diverse needs of students with different academic background. He also conducts pedagogical research on evaluating the effectiveness of various learning activities for continuous refinement on the lesson designs. Dr. Cheung received the Exemplary Teaching Award in General Education 2018 and Vice-Chancellor’s Exemplary Teaching Award 2018.
Dr. Han Dongkun is currently a lecturer at the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering. He earned his PhD degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from The University of Hong Kong. From 2014 to 2016, he was a research scientist at the Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Germany. From 2016 to 2017, he was a research fellow at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, United States. He now teaches three General Education courses: UGEB1307 Energy and Green Society, UGEB2303 Robots in Action, and GENA1113 Student-Oriented Teaching and Seminar. He received the Exemplary Teaching Award in General Education 2018, and Dean’s Exemplary Teaching Award of the Faculty of Engineering in 2019.
Ms. Judy Lo joined the Information Technology Services Centre (ITSC) of CUHK in 2006. She is now the head of the Academic Support Services (Education Technology) in ITSC. Together with colleagues at the Centre for Learning Enhancement And Research (CLEAR), Judy works with teachers to adopt new technologies and pedagogies to enhance teaching and learning. She also leads the instructional design and media production service team of the Centre for eLearning Innovation and Technology (ELITE).
Presentation PowerPoint (Dr. Cheung Hang Cheong) (login required) Presentation PowerPoint (Dr. Han Dongkun) (login required) Presentation PowerPoint (Ms. Judy Lo) (login required)
