Funded by the Education Bureau (EDB), the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and the Centre for the Advancement of Information Technology in Education has developed the very first in-service teacher professional development massive open online course (MOOC) to aid primary and secondary school teachers to implement WebQuest.

WebQuest is a learner-centric project-based learning approach for facilitating K-12 students to pursue collaborative inquiry learning on the Internet, and is becoming an integral part of education. For effective integration of WebQuest into school education, trainings should be provided to teachers to equip them with the pedagogical knowledge and skills required. Yet, most in-service teachers cannot afford time to participate in conventional face-to-face professional development training. MOOC provides a promising solution to the problem.

This MOOC is composed of video-based lecture modules, formative assessment quizzes (each articulated to the end of a module), virtual forums for teacher community building (each facilitated by an online tutor), and summative assessment tasks. In the course, participants can select their own learning track by taking different lecture modules in accordance with their own grade of teaching (primary or secondary) and their own subject of teaching (four key learning areas: English language, Chinese language, mathematics, or humanities). After passing all formative assessment quizzes and completing all community-building and summative assessment tasks, participants will be each awarded an eCertificate, and six hours of continuing professional development by the EDB.

In addition, inter-school subject-specific teacher communities are built for users to share good teaching practices.