HKU Faculty of Education Shares Helpful Tips in Online Learning Design

The Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong has a longstanding commitment to engaging and serving the community. In light of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Hong Kong, it is understandable that the adoption of online teaching has been unexpected and difficult for many teachers. Apart from the technologies involved, how to design an online course is also a major challenge. In light of this, our Faculty members would like to share some helpful tips in online learning design with teachers and the community.

The e-Learning Team of the Faculty operates a blog with our teachers’ regular sharing of their experience in online teaching. In a recent blog post contributed by Professor Nancy Law, Deputy Director of the Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE) of the Faculty, she has shared how she converted a blended learning design course with intensive group work and interactions into a fully online course, and how teachers might address the challenges they face in the design process.

The course, named Learning Design and Technology, is an elective course in the Master of Science in Information Technology in Education [MSc(ITE)] programme. Students are required to develop a mini-course of three to four sessions, at levels varying from kindergarten to higher education. The mini-course should also involve the use of learning technology. For both the students and the course instructor, it is a precious learning opportunity as they all need to apply what they have learnt to the practical demands of the current situation.

In the blog post, Professor Law introduced the objectives and content of the course, and how the course was transformed from being blended with weekly 3-hour face-to-face sessions to fully online while still remaining highly interactive.