It is a great pleasure to invite the teachers at CUHK to share their experience and distinctive outcomes in the upcoming "Teaching and Learning Innovation EXPO 2013". This is the seventh year we have organised the annual event since 2007 which allows teachers to share ideas and practices with the local and the non-local education practitioners.

The event is scheduled to be held on 5 December 2013 (Thursday).

The Expo is an academic conference providing a mutually supportive and positive environment, where creative ideas or practices that lead to learning enhancement can be exchanged through meaningful conversation and interactive seminars. We welcome all ideas and practices ranging from the course to the institutional level, regardless of whether technology is involved or not.

We are now recruiting teachers at CUHK in all disciplines who would like to share their work with the university community. We welcome presentations that showcase good practice and innovation in teaching and learning. The practice can focus on one or more of the following sub-themes:

• Enhancement of teaching and learning through innovative curriculum and learning designs (e.g. enactment of OBA, innovations ideas for curriculum development, and innovative teaching strategies)
• Enhancement of teaching and learning through innovative uses of technology

Submission is now open for any one of the following types of presentations:

• Poster presentation
• Poster presentation AND a talk (20-minute presentation and 5-minute Q&A)

No matter which of the two categories you would like to join, you are given the choice to submit either an abstract or a short paper for inclusion into the online Expo proceedings.

Visit http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eLearning/expo to learn more about "Teaching and Learning Innovation EXPO 2013"!

The Academic IT Steering Committee (AITSC) has applied budget from the Teaching Development Grant for Courseware Development Grant Scheme (CDGS) 2013-14. The call for applications (started in October 2013) will end by November 30, 2013.

The aim of this CDGS is to encourage teachers to move forward from the basic use of eLearning towards developing more sophisticated or more complete eLearning environments for their students. Applicants should devise proposed projects with a budget in the order of $50,000, with a maximum $100,000. More information about CDGS and this call for applications can be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eLearning/announce/CDG.htm.

For enquiries, please contact Ms. Carol Chiu, Secretary of the Academic IT Steering Committee at email: carol@itsc.cuhk.edu.hk.

Do you find it hard to embrace the use of courseware to support your teaching? Do you worry that it would be hard and expensive to build courseware from scratch? Is it a must for you to get supports from service units and specialists (such as instructional designers, art designers) to create courseware to support your teaching? How difficult/easy do you think it would be for you to produce videos like this? For those who have previously created courseware to support your teaching, do you find it hard to continue to update and enhance your courseware?

The TDG project "Development of a practical model to support teachers at CUHK to create courseware for enhancing teaching and learning" which aims at devising a practical model to guide teachers at CUHK through the courseware development cycle is now calling for ideas on new courseware development and enhancemeng of existing courseware from teachers at CUHK.

The key difference between courseware ideas supported by Courseware Development Grant Scheme (CDGS) and this TDG project is teacher involvement in the courseware development cycle. More information about this project can be located at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/clear/tdg/1215/1215-08.html.

Please contact Judy Lo at judyl@cuhk.edu.hk if you are interested to learn more about this project and this call for ideas.

Congratulations! We all made it and survived one of the busiest periods in the academic calendar.

eLearning Team would like to take this chance to update teachers on answers to some common questions we have received during the period and provide teachers with some house-keeping reminders regarding their 2012-13 course sites.

Common Q&As for Teachers

• Why does my course sites on CU eLearning System say "unavailable" / "unavailable to students"?
• How can I add/update/remove users such as non-CUSIS students/TAs/Support Staff in my course sites on CU eLearning System?
• Where can I locate online references to guide me through the use of certain features in CU eLearning System?
• More on eLearning Blog...

Common Questions for Students

• Why can't I find my course on CU eLearning System?
• Why the content in PDF became garbage after print?
• Why can't I find the course content inside my course site(s)?
• More on eLearning Blog...

House-keeping reminders regarding 2012-13 course sites

• Please note that the system will NOT switch all 2012-13 course sites to "unavailable to students" automatically. To block students from accessing 2012-13 course sites, check out the steps on how to set course availability.
• As different teachers have different preference on how long they would like to allow students access to their course site (e.g. some teachers prefer to close the site immediately after end of the semester), teachers should communicate to students how long the course site will be available for their access to avoid confusion and remind students to download study materials to their local computer if they would like to keep local copies for their future reference.
• Below is the standard schedule of all course sites created according to CUSIS information (assuming the course site is created under 2013-14 academic year):
  • 2013-14: the course site is automatically created according to CUSIS information; "unavailable to students" by default after creation; course availability depends on teachers' preference
  • 2014-15: the course site still remains on the system; course availability still depends on teachers' preference
  • 2015-16: the course site still remains on the system; course availability will be switched to "unavailable to students" for all course sites
  • 2016-17: the course site has been removed and no longer exists on the system.

Contact eLearning Team at elearning@cuhk.edu.hk if additional information is needed for the above.

uReply version 2 is now launched! New features include the Question Bank. For teachers who have already sorted out the questions to ask before class, the question bank function is ideal for them to create and store questions in their personal accounts. Questions are reusable. Teachers can easily run stored questions in pre-assigned sequence in the class by clicking 'next'.

Self-register to use the system by clicking the 'new user' button on the teacher interface: http://teacher.ureply.mobi.

Teacher viewing students' responses to questions and giving comments

uDraw is another classroom communication system on mobile devices for teaching and learning enhancement. The tool allows students to edit or draw graphics and submit them to teachers in the classroom for learning. CUHK teachers can use the same IDs and Passwords they have obtained to use uReply to get into uDraw. Also, a shortcut to uDraw can now be found on the classroom computers at CUHK.

Read more about uReply and uDraw on the mobile learning project website at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/mlearning.

Students doing work on an image the teacher provided

Teacher further commenting on students' work in front of the whole class

Dr. Clayton R. Wright has written a comprehensive list of educational technology conferences for the coming year. We would like to express our gratitude to Clayton for his kindness in allowing us to redistribute the list to interested teachers. Please download the document by following the links HERE (doc) HERE (pdf).

The eLearning assistant service: We have a team of trained helpers to assist teachers in building simple courseware and setting up course websites free of charge. Read more about the service at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eLearning/c_services/scs/assistant.html.

eLearning consultations: We provide free face-to-face assistance to teachers on eLearning matters. Read more about the service and make an appointment at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eLearning/c_services/scs/clinic.html.