The interprofessional Dentistry/Design-Project is an innovative blended learning method for teaching students the skills required for successful promotion of communication and consultancy in a public realm. It aims to enable students to develop evidence-based consultancy appropriate for a target audience. The poster and presentation portrays the method and outcomes of thirty student groups that successfully developed an oral health promotion program of suitable quality for publication as evaluated by the two professional faculties at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The University of Sydney. The student groups were unanimous in their evaluation of the program as a valuable learning experience. The conclusion discusses how the interprofessional learning project is successful in enabling architectural students to understand and use communication and consultancy skills effectively for collaboration across disciplines and faculties. The project also showcases the high quality of outcomes of the dentistry students’ public health campaign that were used during Australia’s Oral Health Awareness Week.

This online interactive self-assessment game inspired from the JEU DE L’OIE*, a popular social game in France, where little geese are racing along a path of 63 steps according to the number drawn by the dice, was developed in 2009 thanks to a Courseware Development Grant.

Based on grammar and vocabulary items learnt in each level of French courses as well as listening activity, this game is complementary to class activity and is proposed as an interactive, reusable and expendable activity.

All CUHK students taking French courses can access to it from the eLearning platform Moodle starting from 21 September 2009. In December it will available to anyone visiting the Department’s website and other websites related to French in Hong Kong.

In this presentation we will explain

1. The objectives we had in mind whilst developing the project
2. The rules and principles of the original version of the game vs. its adaptation for CUHK
3. The strategies devised for the development of this project
4. The completion of the game and the feedback received so far
5. The plans for further evaluation of the activity and its assessment

*(translated in English as SNAKES AND LADDERS)

Case scenarios form the basis of clinical tuition on most health-care degree courses. Both real-life and virtual patients are used. Virtual patients are becoming increasingly popular because of their versatility and the use of web technology. In the Medical Faculty we have developed a software platform call FACS (Formative Assessment Case Studies) that supports interactive cases. One of biggest obstacles to using FACS is developing good cases, because writing requires skill and is very time-consuming. FACS is not unique, and medical schools in Europe and North America have developed similar platforms and the concept of sharing cases is emerging. However, important technical issues need to be overcome. Software platforms and the structural design of cases need to be compatible. Electronic Virtual Patient (eViP) is a European initiative to bring together schools that use virtual patients, and to create a bank of 320 reusable cases. Through collaboration with MedBiquitous, technical standards that allow sharing now exist. Existing cases are being REPURPOSED and ENRICHED for their bank. ELearning material can now be peer-reviewed and published at MedEdPortal, addressing issues of credit and authorship. We are in the process developing international links to share our cases with the eViP group.

The ward management of acute pain after surgery has been revolutionized by the introduction of high-tech infusion pumps. However, high-tech pain management brings added risks to the patient, such as morphine overdose and low blood pressure, necessitating a higher level of doctor-nurse supervision, which includes the newly qualified doctor. Following the successful introduction of FACS (Formative Assessment Case Studies) to enhance teaching of preoperative anaesthetic assessment on a final-year two-week module, and following calls by students for a similar web-based resource on pain management, our department has recently authored a set of three acute pain management cases. These interactive case studies follow the same format of a series of web pages linked by question (multiple choice) nodes, with feedback pages for incorrect choices, through which the student progresses. Each FACS is enriched with photographs, diagrams and tables, and there are links to supplementary materials. The cases cover topics such as choice of modality, setting up the pump, documentation, assessment of pain, managing treatment, and treating complications. The website has taken 6 months to construct, and has been tested on students using focus-group interviews. It is currently being used on our current student cohort, and its impact assessed through questionnaires.

Chelsea is a prototype of a computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) application with automatic mispronunciation detection and diagnosis for English pronunciation improvement. The system utilizes automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology and a pronunciation lexicon extended with common mispronunciations of Chinese learners of English. The common mispronunciations are derived from a phonological analysis of Cantonese and English to predict possible phonetic confusions. These confusions are formalized as a set of rules which can generate common mispronunciations for any set of English words. Using this extended pronunciation lexicon, the ASR engine is tasked with word pronunciation recognition. Chelsea translates the recognition results into comprehensible feedback by highlighting the mispronounced words and providing a phonetic transcription of both the model pronunciation and the learner’s own pronunciation.

In medical teaching, lecturers always face a problem of insufficient clinical materials for demonstration in classes. This certainly hampers teaching no matter how well the teachers have prepared for the session. Medical training should be based on a wide coverage of clinical scenarios from which students will learn and accumulate their clinical sense and reasoning powers. In other words, illustrative clinical cases presented in a well-structured multimedia package is a highly desirable strategy. It is not difficult to set up such a multimedia database as many Hospital Authority in-patients and out-patients records consist of text records and x-ray images. Clinical photos and even videos can be recorded by clinicians themselves. The multimedia cases-based database will even be more powerful in promoting teaching if it is fortified with a search function.

Through the internet, students can study and review the clinical cases anytime and anywhere. The function of interactive discussion forum is installed in the system for providing a platform of interaction between students and lecturers to discuss the clinical cases online beyond the boundary of classrooms. The forum messages will automatically pass to the cases’ provider for further improvement.

Case study is commonly used in the pharmacy curriculum to help students learn about drug use and selection in disease treatment. Thus, a case module was created on Moodle for two pharmacy courses in our curriculum. The uniqueness of the case module was that all the cases were developed by pharmacy students who had completed the courses for which the module was intended for.

Sixteen students participated in the project as case designers during Spring and Summer of 2008. A total of 38 cases were developed on all the disease topics covered in the courses. The case module was used among new students in the course during 2008-09. Benefits of knowledge consolidation, enhanced skills in self-learning and critical thinking were reported among the case developers. For the case users, benefits reported by majority of case users included improvement in problem-solving skills, enhanced ability to address drug-related needs of patients and motivation to learn beyond the scope covered in lectures.

This e-platform provides a centralized entrance point for our undergraduates to access the course information. The information includes course objectives, outlines, means of assessment, as well as reference websites, and other related contents. Besides, some basic biochemical techniques will be demonstrated in this platform.

Studying biochemistry courses involves many sophisticated laboratory techniques to perform different kinds of experiments. The techniques will be presented to our undergraduate students by means of online and tailor-made videos. The videos are bundled with concise descriptions. Students can go through the videos online to have ideas of the laboratory steps before attending the laboratory classes. Demonstrators could also take advantage of these videos to have quick revision of the techniques.

The e-platform will be hosted on CUHK Moodle.

We have developed a virtual anatomy system for the head and neck region, and upper-limb region. The head & neck dataset used in the system is the female Chinese Visible Human (CVH) data collected from the Third Military Medical University (TMMU) with an original data size 131G bytes (3072x2048 48bit, 3640 slices [interval: head 0.25mm, others 0.5mm]). The virtual head consists of 536 slices in total. The upper limb dataset used is the fifth male CVH data (collected from TMMU again) with an original data size of 1.143T bytes (4064x2704 48bit 18200 slices). The virtual upper limb consists of 326 slices in total.

Visualization and interaction can be performed on a single personal computer (PC) in real-time. Important features include: texture compressed volume rendering, hardware-accelerated translucent tissue visualization, and pseudo-coloring of different tissues. The virtual anatomy system serves as a fully intuitive educational and research platform which benefits medical students and professionals. Currently, the software system has been deployed in the site of our various medical collaborators in CUHK, including MDL, MISS centre and Department of O&T as well as the “Virtual Anatomy & Physiology (VAP) Laboratory” of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Digital stories are short videos made from still images. The software for producing digital stories is free and easy to use, but the multimedia effects make them highly appealing in introducing or summarizing a topic. Digital stories are also good for adding a humanistic dimension to your teaching. The small file size also makes them easy to share with colleagues and students, and place on the Web. They can be edited easily for different groups of students. Digital stories can also be used by students when they perform an oral presentation, or as a part of their assignments. This poster presentation outlines some of the ways I have used digital stories in my teaching.

Since CUHK started to have a regular intake of Chinese mainland students, helping Putonghua speakers to learn Cantonese has become an integral part of the work undertaken by the Independent Learning Centre. The number of Putonghua speakers on campus is expected to increase as the university shifts towards the ‘3+3+4’ system, so the demand for Cantonese will be greater.

Putonghua speakers have a common belief that Cantonese is a Chinese dialect, they can master it in a short time. However, students soon realize that it is an illusion. Mispronunciation in Cantonese often results in misunderstanding, resulting in a lack of confidence in communication with local people. However, it is not impossible to master native-like or near native-like Cantonese pronunciation if a good learning aid is designed to maximize transfer of their knowledge of Putonghua and to minimize the interferences from Putonghua.

This is why we started to design an online platform for enhancing the mastery of Cantonese sounds and tones for Putonghua-speaking mainland students in March 2009. This project has the following features:

1. Guidance on Cantonese phonology
2. Video clips to demonstrate difficult sounds
3. Cross-referential comparisons of Putonghua and Cantonese
4. Animated cartoons pinpointing some common errors
5. Practice on basic vocabulary and expressions
6. Flash animations with interactive games
7. Auto-marked pre-test to identify individual problems
8. Auto-marked post-test to check user’s achievement

This presentation will introduce the CU Tree Project (2008-2010) and launch a prototype of the Green Education Group website for undergraduates, faculties, staff, alumni and friends of CUHK. The CU Tree Project is aimed to promote an awareness of the rich campus flora and knowledge of different species of trees on campus. Three special features will be highlighted: 1) an interactive map of a tree trail from Chung Chi College, via the University proper, up to United College, and New Asia College showing over 500 photos taken by the Project team, verified scientific names, common English names, Chinese names, locations, and short descriptions of the trees along the way, 2) a searchable database of different species of trees, 3) an electronic platform recommending ‘green activities’ such as tree-tagging volunteers, alumni tree walks and tree talks, the Urban Tree Management Seminar 2009 and a visit to the South China Botanic Garden and the Guangzhou Institute of Landscaping and Gardening. There will be discussions of some innovative eLearning strategies including experimental podcasting and “learning-out-loud”. There may be demonstrations of engagement podcasting and challenge-based learning as reflective practice and interesting points of conversation on green education with members of the university community.

This proposal relates to the design of an eLearning platform employed as part of a course taught in the Department of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Composed so as to augment various teaching techniques employed in the lecture hall, for instance to encourage both peer (student) teaching and self-learning through blended learning strategies rather than the typical lecture-style teaching, the eLearning platform was additionally formed in order to expand students’ learning capacities through the use of technology. In light of this backdrop the suggested presentation shall explicate how a technological platform consisting of various learning components supplemented the classroom teaching scenarios, and the learning outcomes it established. Making reference to the course’s learning goals explanation will be given with regards to how an easy-to-use, easy-to-access eLearning interface consisting of various source materials heightened students’ knowledge and skill development, and empowered learners at the same time to test and evaluate their own learning process. The presentation therefore will clarify learning outcomes and learning efficiency produced, learning outcomes and competence comparable to a non eLearning scenario given the course being taught in the past through non-technological means.

Students learn various skills and theories in university. Among them, one of the important skills is the master of information and IT literacy for their researches. The CUHK University Library System, in this context, teaches the foundation of information retrieval and evaluation skills to students by teaching information literacy courses for undergraduate and post-graduate students every year.

In addition to traditional face-to-face classes, the Library also adopts different platforms to deliver the course contents to students such as using of Library blogs and online evaluation exercise. For example, the Chung Chi College Library has a Library Blog and Twitter which covers the contents of information literacy to the College’s students. Each College freshmen has to complete an online exercise as part of the General Education course requirement.

The use of blogs and online platform provide convenience to teacher and students and can facilitate learning anytime and anywhere. They provide more interactivity between teacher and students which supplement the face-to-face mode of course delivery and meet the learning needs of students. Blog and Twitter supplement each other because of their unique features and are effective tools for contents delivery and communication between library and students.

Over the past few years, e-learning programmes have become an important component of the language enhancement setting at CUHK. Consequently, a lot of effort has been put into the development of learning objects/materials/courseware which are quite sporadic in format and tend to be stored by the creator or at most the department/unit concerned. Rarely will such materials be made accessible to the wider community of CUHK, hence, compromising the impact of all the good work on the learning/teaching community. In view of this, with funding from the UGC, the Online Language Enhancement Initiative (OLEI) Project Team – a sub-project team of the Integrated Listening Oriented Languages System (ILOLLS) has been working on the setting up of a common platform, now known as the Learning Objects Repository (LOR), for hosting and delivering any SCORM-compatible learning objects, regardless of disciplines, for the use of the CUHK community. This initiative is near completion and the project team would like to use this opportunity to introduce the objectives, rationale and design features of the Learning Objects Repository which will be launched by the end of this year, and to solicit feedback from the interested parties at an early stage.

It is a common view that students are able to use and are using a great deal of digital technology in everyday life. There are terms such as ‘Net Generation’, ‘Digital Natives’ or the ‘Y Generation’ to describe these young people. However, it is still a question whether students’ habits of using technologies in everyday life are easily transferrable to the adoption of new eLearning habits. There is no strong empirical evidence that this enthusiasm on the students’ part to commit to eLearning is existent. In April to July 2009, funded as a TDG project called “Survey of students’ perceived needs and requests about eLearning”, we conducted a survey about eLearning perceptions, needs and requests among CUHK students. We received 1438 replies. The study indicates that students are in favor of eLearning. A number of interesting findings will be highlighted on the poster: 1) many eLearning strategies are not commonly used at the University, 2) students expected better learning outcomes if certain eLearning strategies had been used, and 3) a few eLearning strategies were commented on as being particularly useful, including a range of communication strategies and directed searching of the web for information.

ITSC has launched a new podcast service in the fall semester 2009. Teachers have been invited to submit their proposal on new audio/ video work for their teaching for hosting on the new podcast station. Contents posted on the new podcast station will be accessible by visitors from all around the world.

In this short talk, we will first provide the audience with some background information on podcasting and its possible uses for enhancing teaching and learning. After that, we will introduce the new podcast service to the audience in more details. The rationale behind the setting up of the new service will also be discussed.

This short talk will include demonstrations on the use of the new service. Don’t miss this chance if you are interested in knowing more about it.

Sometimes, students make comments on teachers, and would say which teachers are good and which teachers are bad. Are these kinds of comment fair and accurate? They are not always reliable and do not always reflect the truth. In fact, students with different aspects of strength can be explained by their multiple intelligences, and so do teachers. If a teacher who is strong in linguistic and logical intelligences designs his teaching materials and teaches a lesson only in the format of a talk or with abstract ideas, students who are weak in these two kinds of intelligences would inevitably make a wrong comment about this teacher and would also be unable to benefit from the class designed by this teacher. Therefore, in a psychological sense, a smart way to design a lesson would secure the benefit of both the students and a teaching staff. The speaker in this presentation, a clinical psychologist who has more than twenty years of teaching experience, advocates the practical teaching method ‘CARMEL’ which stands for Class Arrangement Rationale through Multiple intelligences Enhancement of Learning. In this presentation, the speaker will let you know how your students will like your teaching, and everybody will like CARMEL.

The presentation will aim at sharing a teaching project funded by a Teaching Development Grant on promoting undergraduate nursing students’ self-reflection ability and skills in managing clinical situations by means of a structured learning program. The program consisting of a workshop and ongoing guided reflection in clinical practice was implemented in four phases. The details of the implementation would be discussed and delineated in the oral presentation.

The main difficulty the project team encountered was the high attrition rate of the respondents. The 38 student participants (61%) who had attended the 3-hour workshop and practiced the reflective learning skills with the clinical teacher’s guidance in real clinical situation could demonstrate better reflective abilities in clinical learning as reflected by the students’ diary writing. The mean age of this sample was 20.26 (SD=0.55) and majority had experience of writing personal diaries, ranging from daily to irregular practice. Only 2 students had previously attended courses related to self-reflection learning. Nevertheless, some students raised concern over the barriers to their clinical learning. Positive comments and suggestions for future development regarding self-reflective learning in clinical practice were also elicited from the analysis of the participants’ narrative comments.

With the launch of CUHK’s Integrated Framework for Curriculum Development and Review in 2004, science programmes and teachers have become familiar with the outcomes-based approach. Specifically, frontline teachers have made much effort to design learning activities that align with learning outcomes and can better engage students. However, many students are passive learners and the class sizes of many science courses are large, rending it difficult for science teachers to engage students in in-class learning activities.

In the light of the increasing number of successful examples on using clickers to “make classes more intellectually engaging and educationally effective” (Wieman, 2008), a group of motivated teachers of the Science Faculty have taken the initiatives to spearhead the use of this student responses system in their courses.

Our initiatives were supported by the Teaching Development Grant. In this presentation, we will share our experience on the implementation of this teaching development grant project and the general outcomes of some pilot case studies. Two other posters presented by the Biochemistry Department/Environment Science Programme and the Biology Department provide illustrative examples of clicker questions used in formal lecture and pre-lab quiz.

In this poster presentation, we will share our experience about using clickers in teaching Cell Biology (BIO2120) in a large classroom with 260 plus students.

My experience of using clickers in teaching ENS3320 (Biochemical Toxicology) in a lecture with 60 students will be presented. After each block of lectures on related topics (e.g. neurotoxicity), 4 to 5 multiple choice questions were posted for students to choose their answers within 1 minute. Most students are able to provide correct answers to those questions which are related to the basic concepts of toxicological principles; for those who did not get it right the first time, we could review the key concepts again in the class for better understanding and learning outcomes. Other questions require logical thinking or test of rationales were also included. Some sample questions will be presented for discussion.

Online quizzes were also used to reinforce key concepts mentioned in lectures. Different sets of questions were further used in the online quizzes. Each quiz (10% of total scores) consists of 20 randomly selected questions from a pool of 40 questions in 4 blocks. From the free comments of course teaching evaluation, some students responded that they found the clicker systems engaged them to concentrate in class better than formal lectures and reinforced them to learn key concepts effectively

The presenter has taught (and is teaching) freshman and post-graduate engineering mathematics courses for three years. This talk highlights the evolution of his teaching methods. In particular, it focuses on useful techniques for group-based interactive learning for abstract/ mathematical subject material. Rather than lectures, the primary in-class expository technique espoused consists of short examples highlighted by the instructor followed by student group-based problem solving and interactive activities to cement understanding of the mathematical tools and concepts taught. The effectiveness of such a teaching style is supported by data collected via a novel biweekly feedback scheme.

Nowadays, teaching is not simply knowledge delivery but involves many aspects like learning outcome, collaboration … etc. In order to achieve these, different learning activities, e.g. presentation, group discussion, debate, role-play, game … etc, can be employed. However, student learning preferences change over time. It is a challenge for teacher to think of new teaching strategies in order to align with the changing teaching environment and generation gap between teacher and students. To tackle this, an innovative teaching strategy is proposed by incorporating entertainment element into learning activities. Entertainment consists of performances of plays and films, and activities such as reading and watching television, that give people pleasure. Adding the element of entertainment into learning activities can help (1) overcome boring course content (2) arise the interest and incentive of students on the course topics (3) facilitate outcomes-based learning. Some higher diploma classes studying business and IT are chosen for new way of learning activity. A questionnaire will be distributed to students and collect their feedback for quantitative data analysis. Students will be invited for giving further comments on new outcomes-based approach for qualitative data analysis. The evaluation will be completed by mid-October 2009 and the result can give us more insight on this new outcomes-based teaching & learning approach.

This poster and accompanying documentation will illustrate my use of peer assessment in teaching music history. This is very much a work-in-progress, as I am implementing this into an assessment scheme for the first time this year. My main goal in employing peer assessment is to increase participation in small group discussions – both in-class and online. Using graphics and text, the poster should communicate the main ideas and hopefully stimulate discussion with colleagues.

Research postgraduates in CUHK are usually allocated with teaching responsibilities by their own department. While their efforts have relieved the teaching loads of professors, departments are not usually able to provide additional resources to develop the postgraduates' capabilities in teaching, lesson preparation and presentation. We think guided peer support in the form of community of practice (called learning circles in our project) can assist capability building. With the assistant of Web 2.0 application, participants of our learning circles share their experience and information and learn from others through one of the following applications/ web services as chosen by the members of their circles: Wiki/ Plurk/ Twitter/ Facebook.

The learning circles began to take shape in the summer of 2009. In the poster, we will explain the rationale behind the project and our activity designs. Each learning circle will meet (physically) 2 times. In the first meeting, a CLEAR facilitator helps the group to decide which application/ web service would be used for group learning and confirm the learning area(s) of each circle. After that, the participants will interact with their facilitator and other members of the circle by using the selected application/ web service for 10-14 weeks. The final meeting will be called after the learning period to take the stocks of the achievement and celebrate it with the circle members.

The Faculty of Law has filmed interviews with a selected group of founding year students since September 2006. In particular these founding students reflected on their university experiences, the LLB curriculum and the culture of the Faculty of Law. Insights gathered from the students’ reflections on their learning experience have been used, inter alia, to develop both new strategies for the alignment of the curriculum and our vision for the provision of legal education in CUHK.

This presentation highlights aspects of these students’ reflections on their university experience as law students at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and provides empirical evidence on student career choices in the Faculty of Law over a four-year programme. The objective is to provide a platform for a university-wide discussion on the impact of undergraduate education on students that may be useful in the context of 3+3+4 reforms.

The presentation will consist of a 10-minute introduction and discussion, followed by a 10-minute film clip of the student interviews.

Background: To facilitate the development of student competence in effective teamwork, the Nethersole School of Nursing at CUHK has been utilizing group projects as one of the assessment formats in academic courses. To further encourage students’ active participation in group projects, the Bachelor of Nursing (BN) Programme established a system in 2008-09 to develop student ability in peer assessment of individual contribution to group projects. This system also helps overcome a problem with the general expectation of the grades awarded to report an individual’s achievements.
Methods: In collaboration with the Centre for Learning Enhancement And Research (CLEAR), we developed the system, which was trial run in term one, 2008-09. Feedback was obtained from teaching teams and students, which led to refinement of the system in term two.
Results: Feedback obtained indicated that this system was well accepted. The adjusted marks achieved a good spread. External examiners of the BN programme supported the system and praised the School’s continuous effort in developing students as high caliber professional nurses.

Lessons learned: Reflecting on the experience of developing this system, we sum up the main lessons learned, including collaboration with CLEAR, obtaining feedback and the contribution of the system.

Universities are utopian communities as institutions as well as physical places, “university campuses”. The campus provides not only physical accommodation, but also expresses a key to the identity and symbolizes the culture of the university.

Throughout history, the campus has been the physical embodiment of the ideas and ideals of the university. In this sense they are enduring manifestations of their time and the evolution of a society and its culture of which they are both a producer and a product. The very inception of a university is accompanied by the dreams and ideals of a community to advance itself and establish its place in history. Many examples of this come to mind as we think of the origins and the history of numerous distinguished universities.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong is in many ways a modern day example of this history. It originated in the aspirations of the community to establish a place of scholarship and education with a defining contribution to the emerging identity of Hong Kong and its rising international position, a juncture of two worlds, a synthesis of a place of modern scholarship, and traditional Chinese culture. In its 50-year history it has served and advanced that aspiration. This presentation will illustrate the makings of this synthesis and show how the Campus Master Plan will extend and enhance it.

The 3+3+4 curriculum and the projected increase in student numbers in 2012 have led to plans for major building expansion of teaching and learning environments. These developments offer the University a unique opportunity to align the design of new environments with approaches to teaching and learning more appropriate for the new curriculum. Teaching and learning environments worldwide, built in the last few years have included more (inter)active, student-centred designs, purpose-built learning spaces and flexible classrooms that take into account more constructivist approaches to learning and the introduction of ubiquitous mobile technologies and the Internet and their subsequent impact on student learning practices. CUHK and the new outcomes-based curriculum expect students to graduate with attributes including: critical and creative thinking, problem solving, self-managed learning, adaptability and collaborative and communication skills. These abilities require designs of teaching and learning environments that encourage more student-centred interactive learning opportunities.

This presentation will:

• Report on key design issues for new teaching and learning environments
• Describe planned new learning spaces for students and the proposed new flexible classroom environments
• Explore establishing several hi-tech interactive classrooms with new furnishings and technology to support more flexible teaching and learning

In view of the changes introduced by the 3+3+4 education reform, and the global development trends in higher education, the University is anticipating a significant upsurge in student population, an increase in academic diversity, substantial changes in subjects and curricula, and the importance of building a lifelong relationship with its students. The University has therefore partnered with IBM Global Business Services to implement the CU Student Information System (CUSIS) based on the proven Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus Solutions software, which is widely adopted by many leading universities around the world.  

As an integrated information system supporting the academic and administrative units across the University, CUSIS is expected to enhance overall service delivery to all stakeholders, in terms of efficiency, flexibility and accessibility. For instance, through the new University Portal, the main gateway to CUSIS, students will be able to enrol in courses, apply for financial aids and scholarships, view academic progression, and manage personal particulars, etc., all done in a paperless environment online. Similarly, teaching staff will be able to access and manage related teaching and learning activities/information: from class schedule to exam schedule, from class roster to grading – anytime, anywhere.

Cloud computing has become a hot topic in the IT industry. With clouding computing set up in place, users do not need to worry about hardware or software platform for their application systems. All they need is to pass their application requirements to IT solution providers and let the solution providers to design and to install the computer architecture. 

Information Technology Services Centre is setting up task force to provide internal cloud computing services to our University users. Virtual machines are being implemented to act as a flexible hardware and software platform for users’ applications. Computer resources can be allocated to individual applications depends on their dynamic needs.  We target to provide tailor-made and cost-effective IT services to our users. 

The development of new technologies requires new concepts to implement digital media into higher education. Teachers are facing new challenges to create a classroom environment that enables teacher to train our students to become digitally literate. The poster presentation shows a concept for a media-based foreign-language classroom. The concept involves the knowledge of neuro-science in order to fit the requirements of brain-compatible learning. The term “interdisciplinary” refers to the contents of the class which combines foreign language teaching with the training of media-based competencies. In addition, the training of key competencies, which gains more and more importance in order to prepare our students for the workplace, is part of the structure of this course.

Different aspects of the foreign language classroom were taken into consideration to create a rich learning environment which enables the learner to experience and practice various foreign language activities. While the role of the teacher changes the learner takes over more and more responsibilities for his/ her learning process.

The case study was conducted at the Technical University of Berlin and includes a variety of evaluation and assessment tools such as questionnaires, tests, presentations and learner portfolios.