Kai-Pan Mark

Unlocking the secret of 3D content for education

Although previous research has shown promising results on 3D in education, the standard method of viewing 3D content would not be practical in Hong Kong as many students need to wear two pairs of glasses due to nearsightedness. This paper will present our study of using the automultiscopic LCD display of Marvel Digital for 3D teaching on General Studies in a primary school in Hong Kong. Significant findings support that pupils learn science topics better in 3D than in 2D.

Engineering education outreach in Chinese social context: An ethnographical study on IEEE-TISP implementation with rural schools in Hong Kong

Engineering education outreach at pre-university level has become a recent focus of engineering education. Some initiatives, such as IEEEs Teacher-In-Service Programme (TISP), have been offered by professional organizations to support engineering education outreach for pre-university sectors by professional engineer volunteers. The support being offered consists of a variety of forms, e.g., web-based teaching plans, on-campus support for teachers and on-campus experiment sessions. The resourceful support by professional organizations may be appropriate in the urban area but in fact needs much adaptation and customization in the less privileged rural schools. One issue is to address the cultural differences between the city and rural contexts. While the city schools favor professionalism when promoting the outreach programmes, the rural schools emphasize more on trust and social networks with the local community to foster initial acceptance and whole-community support to the programme. We adopt an ethnography approach to investigate the implementation of IEEE TISP in two rural small schools in the Frontier Closed Area (FCA) along the Hong Kong and Mainland China boundary. Our experience provides a set of best practices for those who plan about engineering education outreach programmes in a rural community especially in China.

Is information technology general education effective for non-engineering major students?: An exploratory study on ethnically Chinese classrooms

The role of computer and information literacy in the contemporary digital society is as important as language proficiency. This is widely exemplified in the graduate requirements in many tertiary institutions: students must pass the compulsory IT subject(s), often as a mandatory General Education (GE) course, before graduation irrespective of majors. Challenges arise to the computer science faculty as students are from different academic backgrounds with diversified level of IT background, and are often less motivated than taking a course in the major program. In this paper, we attempt to explore the reasons fostering students to devote efforts (i.e., persistence) in the GE IT course in tradition confucian examination-orientated educational settings. Student behavior and perceptions in two major groups of ethnically Chinese students (Mainland China and Hong Kong) are analyzed, revealing that mastery is the main reason leading to persistence in the mandatory IT course. Theoretically, we address the paucity on GE IT related research on ethnically Chinese students through validation and comparison of findings from the literature, leading to new directions of research. Practically, we generalize our experience from practitioners view and propose different suggestions to effectively deliver GE IT courses under the confucian culture.

Student engagement in geographically distributed classrooms through localized solutions

Engaging students across geographically distributed teaching and learning activities can be a challenge in contemporary higher institutions. Often, technical constraints, e.g., hardware and software availability, network connectivity and support availability, affect the quality of teaching and learning activities in remote sites. Student participation in the remote sites decreases if the quality of activities is appalling. This paper reports the approaches taken by the faculty and support staff to overcome the challenges in student engagement in a joint graduate research level course on Information Systems geographically distributed in multiple sites in Hong Kong and China. A combination of Web LiveCast and local Voice over IP (VoIP) messaging tools have been deployed on existing thin client hardware to deliver the “quick and dirty” solution. The solution was proved to be effective in improving student engagement, in terms of improved quality in teaching and learning activities, minimal interruption to the students and teachers by preserving the “natural” way of conducting teaching and learning activities, in the remote site without additional resources input on existing solutions.