THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
KNOWLEDGE TEAM
Minutes of a meeting of the Knowledge Team held on Friday, March 14, 2008 at 12:30 – 2:10 pm in the Conference Room, 4th Floor, Main Library.
Present: Dr Anthony W. Ferguson (Convenor)
Professor John Bacon-Shone
Dr Susan Bridges
Mr Jussie Chan
Dr Bruce Cheung
Professor Francis Chin
Ms Jennifer Du
Dr Bob Fox
Professor Nancy Law
Dr Elaine Martyn
Ms Kaye Nolan
Ms Nicol Pan
Dr Frank Tong
Dr Beverly Webster
Ms Antonia Yiu
Dr Y.C. Wan (Secretary)
Apologies: Dr Colin Day
Dr P.T. Ho
Dr David Kennedy
Dr John Nicholls
Mr David Palmer
Ms Tina Pang
Professor Mike Prosser
Mr Peter Sidorko
Mr Benny Tai
Mr David Wan
Ms Lillian Wong
The Convenor extended his warm welcome to Ms Kaye Nolan and Ms Jennifer Du, who attended the meeting on behalf of Mr David Palmer and Mr David Wan respectively.
1. Minutes
The minutes of the last meeting, held on January 18, 2008, were confirmed without amendment (documents distributed).
2. Matters arising from the last meeting
a) NVivo – should a campus-wide license be acquired?
Ms Yiu tabled a document entitled Preliminary Quotation: Selected Qualitative Data Analysis Software, which provides a comparison of the license fees (in US$) of nine QDA software (copies distributed at the meeting).
Professor Bacon-Shone noted that for 50 academic licenses, annual fees per licence for the listed software were in the range of US$100 to US$200. To understand the potential demand, a circular listing all choices (with links to their websites) could be sent to departments/units surveying which software they would like to take up if the annual licenses fees were from HK$750 to HK$1500.
Members noted that the campus site license programme for Endnote was very popular among students and it had over 4,000 downloads last year. Compared with Endnote, however, NVivo would be more popular among postgraduates and researchers. The Faculty of Education also decided to use NVivo and purchased 10 academic licenses. The Convenor remarked that it would be possible for the Libraries to obtain a campus site license for NVivo and put it on trial.
Professor Bacon-Shone noted that from the experience of the Computer Centre in handling SPSS subscription, researchers were willing to share the license fees. A lot of people signed up for SPSS though it was not offered free. It would be very simple to make use of CC’s existing system in handling SPSS subscription to seek responses on QDA software from departments.
The Convenor concluded that he would work with Dr Ho to seek responses as soon as possible.
3. University general education/broadening education using IT
The Convenor gave a PowerPoint presentation on “Blended/hybrid learning discussion” (PowerPoint slides are available at http://lib.hku.hk/kt/).
He noted that in “hybrid” or “blended” classes, a significant amount of the course learning activity has been moved online, making it possible to reduce the amount of time spent in the classroom. Traditional face-to-face instruction is reduced but not eliminated in this case. Hybrid/blended courses are available in many US universities and he shared with members the experiences at Texas A & M University, Oregon University, Northwestern University, Brigham Young University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and University of North Texas.
Using the University of North Texas as a case study, he further explained the reasons why blended learning was adopted and the degree to which blended learning was used. He concluded his presentation by introducing additional resources, namely the Sloan-C Workshop on Blended Learning and Higher Education, which is to be held in early April in Chicago, and Creating Successful Blended Courses PowerPoint slides created by Marj Kibby of the University of Newcastle (http://www.slideshare.net/mdk572/hybrid-teaching/).
Professor Law noted that good network traffic is a basic requirement to providing blended learning. However, her recent experience at the Faculty of Education was that the connection speed was only 28K/second, which could not be sufficient to support videoconference. Members noted that the slow connectivity on campus might be the result of many factors and the Convenor would discuss with Dr Ho to identify the problem and possible solutions.
4. IT@HKU symposium on 5 June 2008 – your support and idea
Dr Fox noted that the “Transforming Learning through Technology @HKU” Symposium would be held at 2:00-5:45 pm, June 5 2008, in Rayson Huang Theatre. The Technology in Higher Education (THE) Team is working on the logistics and Mr Jussie Chan and his team members compiled a list of potential topic presenters (copies of which were distributed at the meeting).
The Symposium is primarily an event for the HKU community (including SPACE) but people from other universities have also been invited to join. To promote the event, emails were sent and a symposium website was being set up. It was expected that hundred of teachers would attend the symposium.
The Convenor noted that the symposium would provide a good opportunity to showcase our achievements on IT in teaching. He also suggested incorporating PowerPoint presentations and video recordings of the symposium into the HKU Scholars Hub so that they would be available on the Web later on.
5. HKU Scholars Hub and open access in Hong Kong – progress report
The Convenor thanked Ms Kaye Nolan for giving a presentation on “HKU Scholars Hub and open access in Hong Kong” since Mr Palmer was sick and unable to attend this meeting. In her presentation Ms Nolan remarked on the following:
- Objectives of the HKU Scholars Hub.
- Software, design features and policies of the Scholars Hub.
- As of January 2008, the Scholars Hub comprised more than 20,000 items, including 15,164 theses, 2,746 articles and 274 images.
- Open access (OA) movement and the Scholars Hub.
- Recent international advances in the OA movement.
- Publishers’ OA policies.
- What is happening HK-wide to encourage the OA movement?
Ms Nolan noted that a FAQ for the HKU Scholars Hub was being prepared. It would be sent to all KT members for information in due course.
6. A.O.B.
Nil
7. Date of the next meeting
[Post-meeting note: the date of the next meeting will be confirmed later].
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