In recent years the number of students entering higher education in China’s inland has soared to unprecedented levels. Courses at colleges of further education offering access to higher education are now commonplace. Opportunities for mature students to return to higher education have also increased. Partnerships are being formed with employers and others to provide lifelong learning for employees.
As a result of the sheer physical size and population dispersion in China’s inland, many potential students have been denied equal access to courses because they are not geographically convenient. To satisfy both the demands of students and to maintain quality, a long-term view of flexibility in higher education would prove more practical. Web based learning and more traditional on-site methods of delivery can co-exist and, with rigorous quality control, lead to substantial improvements to both modes of delivery as well as research activity.
In this paper, the author argues that web based teaching may provide the best solution to the difficulties involved in higher education reform in China’s inland. The future, in terms of information technology, is here to be exploited. Meeting the challenges of such a large educational market, whilst maintaining quality, will entail a radical review of how course quality is assessed. The author further compares the situation in Hong Kong and China’s inland.

As is typical of distance learning institutions, the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) provides regular face-to-face tutorials to facilitate students' learning in addition to the self-instructional course materials. Attendance is non-compulsory, so there is often little similarity in the group of students attending from one tutorial to the next. The nature of tutorial support is contingent upon the needs of each individual course, but the basic requirement is that students must have the option to seek he from the tutor to resolve any problems being faced in the course. Consequently, although tutors are urged to encourage student involvement and are discouraged from lecturing teacher-centred learning is still dominant in the face-to-face sessions. Whereas, in conventional settings, most PBL activities are conducted in and around tutorials, at OUHK it is less straightforward to do this because of the time constraints and students' expectations of assistance. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore the place of PBL in OUHK tutorials, and the compromises that need to be made to enable it to be used successfully. Many studies have placed emphasis on the roles and responsibilities of PBL tutors in conventional face-to-face learning. However, little research has been done on the tutor's role as facilitator in a distance learning PBL environment, and how this can be balanced with the role of help-giver. As a preliminary investigation of this issue, a group of tutors was asked to introduce some PBL activities into their tutorials. Apart from observations, data about tutors' perceptions of using PBL in this context was gathered from semi-structured interviews. The difficulties that tutors experienced during the PBL tutorials and suggestions for modification have been highlighted in the paper.

This presentation shows some of the practical aspects of computational lexicography involved in the process of implementing a bilingual online glossary at the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) based on a subject-specific glossary-assisted model (SSGA) with the aim of assisting Chinese learners undertaking English-medium courses in linguistics. The glossary was created using the standard online lexicon editing form designed by Greaves, Director of the Virtual Language Centre (VCL) project. Having logged on to a special server with their usernames and passwords, lexicographers are able to add and edit lexical entries online. The online glossary we have developed is bilingual and contains the following items for each term: The term itself (e.g. Pragmatics), Chinese equivalent, Definition (in English), Comments (e.g.noun), Examples, and Synonyms (if any). The project team also used a CGI web program developed by Greaves to link every word in the study units to VLC online lexicon, thus allowing students to access the lexical entry by simply placing the cursor over a word and double-click. It is well recognized that the speed at which students can absorb the unfamiliar vocabulary will affect the quality of their study and their mastering of the course content. Since the online bilingual glossary facilitates instant access to the meaning and pronunciation of unfamiliar words, much time and effort otherwise student spend in the traditional paper-based lexical search has been reduced. And as the SSGA based online bilingual glossary also integrates vocabulary, lexicon, concordancing and multimedia, our students can benefit from a comprehensive range of resources. The potential for SSGA lies in the application of the methodology tested so far to other courses, especially those from other disciplines such as science, to support students from a Chinese background, and indeed this has been planned for the second phase of the project.

For nearly 30 intakes over 15 years, Charles Sturt University has delivered a distance education course which operates with Australian and, for the last 6 years, Hong Kong students. Since the course has made extensive use of computer based materials as well as computer mediated communication over that time, some valuable lessons have been learnt. While some of these have to do with institutional and management issues, many are about the differences between theory and practice.
The use of computer mediated communication increases workload rather than relieving it as some might suggest. While in some respects, students may feel that they are getting a better service with electronic communications and materials, there is also a severe penalty to be paid.
On balance, this situation favours the use of such technologies but not sufficiently to result in enthusiastic adoption. A key area involves the examination of how effectively the static and dynamic resources are attuned to the educational needs of the students. Activities which force a synchronisation are poorly received compared to ones which operate asynchronously. Similarly, electronic resources which simply replace existing printed material without a large amount of 'value adding', have also been found to be of dubious value.