Background: Educators have divided and often strongly held views on whether service-learning should be required of all students. However, studies examining students' view on mandatory service-learning are limited in the literature. Purpose: This article contrasts and examines students' views toward a service-learning requirement at a Hong Kong university before and after attending a mandatory service-learning course, and any resulting changes. Methodology/Approach: This is a retrospective qualitative study using semistructured interviews. Participants were 49 students who completed a service-learning course in the 2013-2014 academic year. They were selected according to the nature of their performance in their completed course. Findings/Conclusions: Results show that students' perspectives toward service-learning are not static but rather change dramatically as a result of their experiences. Most students, even those who recalled being initially negative or resigned, reported positive views toward service-learning after completing the course. Implications: Students' initial resistance alone is not a reason for making service-learning optional. Some students have a negative view due to a lack of information or misinformation. Making it compulsory gives these students an opportunity to decide for themselves based on true experience, which, if implemented effectively, has the potential of nurturing initially hostile or inert students into more civic-minded citizens. Copyright ©2021 SAGE Publications.

This paper addresses Hong Kong Chinese undergraduate students' conceptions of teacher care informed by their experiences of teacher-student relationships within university context. Utilising the concept of teacher care from Nodding's (1984) ethics of care from a Confucian-Vygotskian perspective, this research considers emergent themes of teacher care from the narrative accounts of final-year students majoring in management and bilingual studies. Results indicate that teacher care is perceived as a deepening of trust, mutuality, responsiveness, and reciprocity between students and teachers, and an enrichment of caring scope, embodied in the conceptualisation of 'Pedagogical Care' to 'Holistic Care' and then onto 'Sustainable Care'. A dialectical framework of teacher care within Hong Kong higher education context is proposed, based on the psycho-social make-up of students and socio-cultural context of learning. This study exposes the importance of teacher care in students' learning as influenced by relational dynamics, and proposes the adoption of caring pedagogy in universities. Copyright © 2021 Routledge.

Background: Holistic competencies comprise various holistic skills (e.g., communication) and positive values and attitudes (e.g., empathy). There have been increasing efforts worldwide to foster students' holistic competency development within engineering curricula. While recent studies indicate a positive shift, it remains unclear whether such efforts are driven by only a handful of individuals or more widely supported by systemic changes to constructively align competency development with the engineering curriculum. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study investigates the extent to which endeavors to promote holistic competency development in Hong Kong's tertiary engineering education are supported by a broader, constructively aligned curricular system. The three key components of constructive alignment developed by Biggs in 2003—intended outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment—form the conceptual framework guiding this study. Design/Method: This study conducted document analysis of 245 engineering courses and interviews with five engineering instructors from three Hong Kong universities. Results: Only 34 of 245 syllabi analyzed incorporated holistic competencies in their intended outcomes. These outcomes were associated with both traditional and experiential pedagogies but were not matched with direct or explicit assessments. Data show that program leaders' conceptions of holistic competencies, instructor's limited capabilities, and issues assessing competencies pose challenges to constructive alignment. Conclusions: Challenges for achieving constructive alignment and recommendations for addressing them are discussed. Our findings highlight the need to train all levels of engineering instructors in student holistic competency development, to acquaint instructors with industrial experiences and expectations, to develop top‐down and bottom‐up reforms to refine engineering curricula, and to provide increased recognition for teaching quality and efforts. Copyright © 2021

A major cluster of economic engines that have changed Asian higher education, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan have all developed high-income societies as well as world-class universities which linked local “knowledge economies” to global science and created hubs for international collaborations and mobility. However, there has been limited analysis of interdependencies between the rise of world-class universities and changes in the flows of international talent. This paper elaborates on the concept of higher education internationalization that aims at enhancing geopolitical equity in global mobility and re-positioning local students for improved access to the world-class excellence. The paper compares key themes and patterns that define the Tiger societies’ unique positions in the field of global higher education. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s).

COVID-19 and the shift to online teaching necessitated a change in approach for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers in preparing their students for university studies. This study explored how EAP instructors coped with and adapted their provision for emergency remote teaching. The study was conducted at an English-medium university in Hong Kong and a qualitative case study approach was adopted. The results revealed two overarching themes of opportunity and challenge. While the sudden shift to online teaching forced innovation and fostered collaborative learning and feedback, teachers experienced difficulties in communicating with students and monitoring their learning. The study voices teacher perspectives in delivering EAP courses online and highlights important implications for the successful delivery of future online EAP provisions. Copyright © 2021 by the authors.

In this chapter, a case study of implementing blended learning in a linguistics course will be reported. Traditionally, this course was taught in the mode of a 1-hour face-to-face plenary lecture plus a 2-hour small group tutorial session each week for 13 weeks. To promote blended learning and give students an enhanced learning experience that allows more flexibility and more peer interaction, two of the plenary lectures were converted into online lessons, and Moodle was used as the online platform for hosting the online content. Three levels of online activities were designed and provided online: every online lesson consisted of 3–4 mass open online course (MOOC)-style high-quality lecture video clips (Level 1, resource-based activities) followed by online quizzes (Level 2, response-based activities) and discussion forums (Level 3, collaborative activities). Post-lesson analysis shows that over 320 threads were posted by students on the Moodle forums, suggesting that students were actively engaged in online discussions. A post-lesson survey was conducted after the first online lesson, and the feedback was very positive. The majority enjoyed the flexibility of the online lesson and felt more independent during the learning process. They found the video lectures attractive and effective and the online discussion engaging and beneficial. Other than the online lessons, other resources and activities such as stand-alone course-specific website, weekly online quizzes, and Wikibook projects have been adopted to further promote blended learning. To ensure a fulfilling learning experience, instructional design plays a crucial part, especially in arranging the online lessons and other blended learning experiences. Clear and detailed instructions and guidance were also vital for the success of blended learning. Copyright © 2021 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Purpose - Knowledge sharing, the most important process in knowledge management, enables knowledge-intensive organizations to foster innovations and to gain competitiveness. Universities, the best contemporary embodiments of knowledge-intensive organizations, nowadays face fiercer competition in the changing world. Knowledge sharing is the key for academic departments to gain competitive advantages through innovation. However, limited studies examined the relationships between top management support, knowledge sharing and affiliation and trust. Based on the literature review, this study developed a research model which aims to examine the relationship between top management support and knowledge sharing, and the mediating role played by affiliation and trust.Design/methodology/approach - A questionnaire survey was conducted in eight universities in Hong Kong. Data gathered from 109 professoriate staff (including chairs, professors and [research] associate/assistant professors) were used to test the four hypotheses in the research model with partial least squares structural equation modeling.Findings - The results showed that top management support has a positive impact on affiliation and trust, and that affiliation and trust also have a positive impact on knowledge sharing. However, this study showed an insignificant linkage between top management support and knowledge sharing. Therefore, this study confirmed the mediating role played by affiliation and trust.Practical implications - Based on the results, this study provided recommendations on how academic management and knowledge management consultants increase the faculty members’ affiliation and trust, for instance, mentoring, performance appraisal system, social interactions and communication pathways.Originality/value - The findings of this study contribute to the literature in two ways. First, affiliation and trust are two interplayed elements of team climate that should be considered together. Second, this study

Moral education is not a new concept in universities; however, university students’ firsthand learning experience and valuation of moral education have not been fully explored. As part of a teaching and learning study conducted in two undergraduate classes in a Hong Kong university, this study explores the university students’ perceptions of learning moral education. Data were mainly collected through student interviews and their reflective journals. Most students supported the learning of moral education. They asserted that moral education has a lifelong nature; thus, they should learn it in universities. The study reveals that moral education can facilitate the university students’ personal and social betterments, showing the intrinsic and instrumental values of moral education. This small-scale case supplements the literature on the understanding of the development of moral education in higher education. This study also reflects the necessity to rethink the moral aim and the moral education curriculum of higher education. Copyright © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Due to the challenges of all-round development, higher-education students are increasingly demanding more flexible learning that goes beyond the on-campus/online dichotomy. However, university students miss learning opportunities because of the conflict of time and space. Blended learning is an effective way to create more learning opportunities and support university students’ flexible learning, but its implementation varies across contexts. This study proposed an alternative blended teaching and learning approach to solve practical problems defined in the context of a traditional classroom in a university in Hong Kong when students pursue flexible learning and global learning. A three-round action research approach was used to improve the effects of blended synchronous teaching and learning. Data collection and analysis in each round showed that the students positively rated the implementation of blended learning according to their needs, the quality of the technologies adopted, and the benefits gained. This blended synchronous teaching and learning mode was structured based on the implementation of different actions in three rounds, bridging the gap between research and practice in blended synchronous learning.
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