Equipping with digital literacy and skills related to the latest digital technologies and integrating the new contents into the conventional curricula have been in high demand in recent years. Despite the potential educational benefits addressed by scholars, many pre-service teacher education programs in visual arts still have not established a revised curriculum which is designed to strategically integrate the new digital tools going beyond screen-based multimedia. This exploratory case study was conducted in a pre-service teacher program in visual arts in Hong Kong to measure the effect of 3D modeling software and digital fabrication technologies in developing creativity and problem-solving skills. The participants learned fundamental design theories, digital and physical crafting skills. Then, they were asked to create a functional design for daily life with a 3D prototype using digital technologies and hand-craft skills. The results of this study provide evidence for potential advantages in using 3D digital technologies both in virtual and physical dimensions. Despite the steep learning curve in learning 3D modeling software for the first few lessons, the participants’ level of motivation and engagement increased gradually. The participants’ response revealed that an understanding how things are made to work functionally helped them develop problem-solving skills and expanded the scope of creativity. The shortcomings such as going beyond technical tooling, equipping with sufficient devices and lack of resources for further application were addressed. Copyright © 2019 UCC March. All rights reserved.

This pilot study investigates the impact of using mobile devices to facilitate the practising of scales and arpeggios. The AI application was designed by an engineer/musician in Hong Kong. This AI application enables students to practise, record themselves, view their mistakes and prepare for examinations based on the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music’s scales and arpeggios syllabus for five instruments (violin, flute, clarinet, trumpet and saxophone). This study (a) examines the progress of learners who use the application to practise scales and arpeggios; (b) observes how elementary learners perceive mobile practising in a virtual learning environment and (c) proposes a blended learning model that uses mobile practising with the support of AI. Copyright © 2020 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a mobile User-Generated-Content (m-UGC) tool on enhancing primary students’ vocabulary learning motivation and learning outcomes. A total of 40 primary students in Hong Kong participated in this study. The results showed using the m-UGC tool could increase primary students’ learning motivation and significantly improve their vocabulary learning. Copyright © 2020 Yanjie Song, Yin Yang.

With the rapid development of technology, Early Childhood (EC) educators have been urgently required to appropriately integrate various and cutting-edge digital technologies to support the diverse learning needs of students in Hong Kong. The Future Classroom of EdUHK offers an opportunity for educators to integrate innovative toolkits to explore students’ potential learning opportunities, embracing their design thinking and creativity. This study applies an exploratory case study approach to learn the ways of improving students’ learning by using digital technologies in the Future Classroom, and develop practical toolkits for EC educators. Data was collected by activity plans, class videos, and students’ artifacts. Three students aged 6-8 in Hong Kong were invited to participate in this study. Content analysis was employed to analyze the effectiveness of the toolkits on students’ learning modal and engagement. The findings show that digital technologies can help change students’ learning modal from passive to interactive by stimulating multimodal learning, i.e. making an AR vocabulary card required modals of linguistic, gestural, visual, and aural. The toolkits can build a platform for design thinking and creativity, i.e. a map and digital story of the ocean were created by using a toolkit composed of 3D printing models, coding robots, and a digital book App. Students’ learning engagement can be improved by the toolkits, especially on the emotional aspect since they took the initiative to create their stories and characters at a later stage. Lastly, a list of practical digital resources is provided. Copyright © 2020 International Conference on Learning and Teaching.

Involving parents in their children's school-based English language learning is beneficial to learners' academic achievement as well as their language and literacy development. However, involving parents can be challenging. This study reports on one teacher's use of a digital learning platform, Seesaw, with his third-grade (7 to 8 year-olds) English language writing class in Hong Kong to address the lack of parental involvement. The platform became a space for parents to be involved in their child's school-based writing. It enabled them to view, like and comment in response to their child and other children's English work. Although parents were seen to be involved on the platform, it was observed they mainly viewed and liked rather than commented. Future pedagogical directions will be discussed with suggestions provided on how parents can be encouraged to take a more active role on such platforms. Copyright ©Sage Publications Ltd.

In recent years, the widespread growth of mobile-assisted language learning using apps has made English vocabulary learning increasingly accessible. This study investigated students' perceptions of a vocabulary learning app developed by the researcher as a tool to help them to improve their L2 receptive vocabulary. The app, containing 20 levels, works with both iOS and Android. The participants were 14 undergraduate students at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. A qualitative methodology of semi-structured interviews captured a holistic overview and revealed students' perceptions of the app. The results suggested that Hong Kong university students have a strong motivation for acquiring an L2 vocabulary. Participants also indicated a preference for mobile applications using gamified features. The study highlights directions for future research into apps for English language learning. Copyright ©I G I Global.

Online learning has become a ubiquitous part of the educational landscape and how teachers are supported in developing approaches to teaching online is a fundamental aspect of the students' learning experience. Based on the implementation of a professional development course on becoming an online teacher offered in a blended learning mode at one university in Hong Kong, this article proposes that offering this type of professional development in a blended mode is very effective in facilitating enhanced usage of the university's learning management system. In a blended mode, teachers are actively engaged with blended learning and were found to make more extensive use of features/tools in Blackboard after they attended the professional development course. Results support that offering professional development in a blended mode provides teachers with an authentic student perspective, at the same time as they take guided steps in the teacher's role in blended learning. Copyright ©Routledge.

Developing, sustaining, and improving student engagement is of vital importance to higher education instructors. Educational technology has been linked to student engagement, and preservice and in-service teachers need to develop information communication and technology (ICT) skills and knowledge to apply them in the classroom as well as to develop ICT skills in students. Thus, further investigation of this link in the field of education is needed. This narrative systematic review is a synthesis of 42 peer-reviewed articles from across four international databases, published between 2007-2016 and is a subset of a larger systematic review. The results indicate that the majority of research has been undertaken within undergraduate preservice teacher education, predominantly in the US, Hong Kong, and the UK, with limited attention given to grounding research in theory. This review found educational technology supports student engagement, with behavioral and affective being the most prevalent dimensions. Social networking tools (SNT), knowledge organization and sharing tools, text-based tools, and website creation tools were the most effective at promoting engagement. However, caution is needed when employing SNT and assessment tools, as they were also more likely to lead to disengagement. Further research is needed on how educational technology affects disengagement, how tools are used in online teacher education programs, and how to effectively integrate SNT in education programs. Copyright ©Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.

In this article, we report on an action case study on the use of mobile-assisted peer feedback to improve second language (L2) speakers' English performance. Drawing on the learning-oriented assessment (LOA) framework (Carless, 2007), the study made in-class use of a newly developed mobile app with the provision of peer feedback. The study was conducted with 25 Business School students in an English for Specific Purposes course at a Hong Kong university. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, including a questionnaire survey, a focus group discussion after the class and a teacher journal. In addition to the participants' general attitudes, two broad themes were found in relation to the participants' learning experience, namely the use of peer feedback and the affordances and constraints of technology. Results showed that students generally agreed on the positive effects of mobile-assisted peer feedback (e.g. real-time and anonymous feedback), while they recognized some limitations such as the small screen size of their phones and the limited number of given rubrics. Finally, we discuss the implications from different perspectives based on the reported themes. Copyright © Sage Publications Ltd.

It has been well documented that active learning (AL) improves student learning outcomes in education. This quasi-experimental study explores the effect of active learning on students' knowledge of calculus concepts, in the form of the Calculus Concept Inventory (CCI), regular assignment scores, and test scores, during an 8-week calculus tutorial program. The active pedagogies used were cooperative problem-based learning and peer assessment, implemented using an interactive online whiteboard (IOWB) called RealtimeBoard. This study reveals statistically significant evidence that active learning increases students' conceptual understanding and graded assignment performance in a first-year calculus class in Hong Kong. Furthermore, this study contributes towards a better understanding of how active learning can be implemented effectively in Asian tertiary mathematics education. Copyright © Springer.