Short Descriptions

This is an established community of support and practice sharing. This Community is funded by a Teaching Development Grant from the Office of the Executive Vice-President & Provost. The community comprises faculty and staff interested in enhancing the intercultural learning experiences and competence of both PG and UG students at HKUST. This community was established to address issues raised in a study of UG students’ expectations of their intercultural learning experiences in 2017.

Possible Benefits

As the community has met over the past 2 years and developed its mission and objectives, issues associated with and strategies for fostering a mindset of diversity have emerged. It is believed that without such a mindset, intercultural learning experiences will be of little value, possibly even ineffective, and that it is unlikely that intercultural competence will develop. The community will build on work already done and continue to support achievement of the University’s strategic objective to be a champion of diversity.

Deliverables

In the next academic year we propose continuing activities that have proven successful in the past, including providing seminars/workshops and training with invited speakers and trainers, as well as sharing sessions among University colleagues. Engaging students as partners in some of these activities has also proved successful, and we would continue to engage students in our activities. One of these will be the Diversity = Strength film festival and student forum to be held in October (postponed from February).

Short Descriptions

This personal project is a continuation of my previous work on learner engagement. This previous work resulted in a Center-wide review of if and how we assess participation on our courses and a change in our attendance policy. I am very pleased to read many references to learner engagement in our colleagues' Scholarship Snippets and proud to have brought this concept to the fore in the Center. The project also emerges from reflections on my own observation event and a response to my post on Scholarship Snippets (thanks Rebecca). I am keen to continue to explore how we diagnose the four different types of engagement in our classrooms, cognitive, behavioural, affective, and especially, social, and wonder if there is a chicken or egg-type relationship between social engagement and collaborative competence. In other words, if a student is not engaged socially, will this hinder his/her development of collaborative competence? And if a student does not have the competence to work collaboratively in a team, is it possible that he/she will never engage socially? The implications of a lack of social engagement are significant. Pekrun and Linnenbrink-Garcia (2012) point out that someone who is disconnected with other group members, and thus socially disengaged, is likely also behaviorally off-task: not listening to responses of other members, not contributing to the interaction. They are also unlikely to invest effort or persistence, or to direct attentional resources in effective ways to be cognitively engaged. However, in her response to my reflections, Rebecca highlights the complexity of the interrelationship between the different types of engagement: 'some socially anxious students may well be minimally cognitively engaged when they are speaking - due to the overwhelming stress of the simple act of speaking - and some may not be learning as a result, even though they are speaking.' Since we seem to prize collaboration and now assess collaborative competence, this issue is of interest to me, and I believe warrants attention.

Possible Benefits

Insight into how we promote and assess development of collaborative competence

Deliverables

Talk at EYE in August

LANG 106 is an English communication course for all first-year engineering students at HKUST. The approach adopted in this course is new for HKUST and, as far as we know, for similar courses elsewhere. Now in its third semester, feedback from teachers and students on the course so far indicates that it develops in students a sense of responsibility for their own learning, and fosters confidence and thereby the motivation to actively improve their learning. The course: - requires students to reflect on their previous learning experiences and needs - introduces a range of language-learning strategies for students to try out and consider - requires students to set learning objectives for the semester, and to plan, carry out, and evaluate out-of-class learning designed to meet these objectives - requires students to submit a ‘Learning Portfolio’ - is assessed on a Pass/Fail basis In this paper we will first discuss the rationale for the course, the syllabus and sample materials, and the assessment/evaluation system. We will then share comments from teachers and students on the course. Finally, we will suggest how we hope this course (and other language courses for engineering students) will continue to evolve.