As part of the reform of the overall education system in Hong Kong, the government set a target in October 2000 of raising the percentage of senior secondary school graduates who could receive higher education from the current 30% to 60% within a period of ten years. Prior to this announcement, however, the School of Professional and Continuing Education of The University of Hong Kong (or HKU SPACE for short) had already taken the lead by establishing the first Community College in March 2000. The Associate Degree programme of the College offered an alternative route to higher education to many aspiring young people. The broad-based curriculum with its equal emphasis on science and humanities (as well as solid generic skills) is a new attempt to produce people that can meet the challenges of the knowledge society. The first intake of 740 students in 2000 was followed by a second intake of more than a thousand in 2001. This paper examines the experience gained during the first two years of this new development, and explores the role of community colleges in general in the education reform movement and human resources development strategy of Hong Kong.
[Copyright of International Journal of Lifelong Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0260137032000055312]

Some critics have commented that online courses may discourage teacher–student interaction, which is considered by teachers and researchers as an important element in language learning. A total of 60 associate degree students who attended an online English course in Hong Kong responded to a questionnaire asking them about their effort and interest in learning English, their anxiety about computer applications, their self‐monitoring capability, their interactions with the teacher and their peers and their competence in English. Analysis of variance results showed that those students who perceived themselves as more competent had more favourable perceptions of their interaction with the teacher than did those who were less competent, but for all other variables the two groups did not differ. The findings imply that online language learning does not necessarily diminish interaction. Instead, the level of interaction may depend on the learners' sense of competence in the target language.
[Copyright of Educational Media International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523980600641429]

This paper uses the case-study method to examine detailed data related to student and tutor usage of an asynchronous discussion board as an interactive communication forum during a first-semester associate degree course in applied psychology at the City University of Hong Kong. The paper identifies 'what works' in relation to discussion board use, demonstrating how students might gradually create an online community of their own, but only if prompted in a timely and appropriate way by the course structure. It also identifies three distinct phases in online interaction and suggests these might, to some extent, be mediated by assessment tasks.
[Copyright of ALT-J: Research in Learning Technology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687760701673592]