Purpose : Free and open-source software (FOSS) has been used worldwide because of the advantages of user control, cost-saving, flexibility, openness, freedom, more security and better stability. The purpose of this study is to explore the status quo of educational application of FOSS and the trends from international perspectives and its implications for higher education in Hong Kong.Design/methodology/approach: The method of cluster analysis was used in this study. The Web of Science database was used as the data source and all relevant literature for the year 2010–2020 on the theme of “FOSS” was collected for analysis. The information visualization software CiteSpace was used for citation visualization analysis, revealing the research results of FOSS worldwide, including hot spots and development trends.Findings: This paper found that FOSS has become an important research area and is playing an important role in the reform and development of education. Meanwhile, the development and application of FOSS have regional imbalances and strong differentiation, including the educational sector. The paper also found that although FOSS has entered the stage of interdisciplinary development, the research and development of FOSS in the field of education is insufficient, which poses a huge challenge to decision-makers, teachers and students.Originality/value: Implications for higher education in Hong Kong including: attach importance to and vigorously promote FOSS research and practice to benefit more teachers and students; teachers and students need to be trained for acquiring the awareness and skills of FOSS applications and formulate different strategies; the government should provide greater support to formulate and implement a short and middle-term development plan to facilitate the application of FOSS; and Hong Kong higher education institutions may strengthen exchanges and cooperation with counterparts around the world to jointly promote the development of FOSS. It is

Reading is the basis of most learning but is regarded by students as a boring activity in Hong Kong. Therefore, schools in Hong Kong have launched different reading programs to promote reading. One of the successful examples is Reading Battle which gamifies the reading comprehension assessments with points, levels, e-badges and leaderboard on an interactive learning platform. This study looked into how gamification affected the flow experience of students and discussed to what extent the nine flow dimensions were experienced by them, especially the heavy users of the gamified learning platform. This case study chose nine students from four different elementary schools in Hong Kong and adopted a mixed method such as questionnaires and interviews. While many students first did it for external motivation such as getting more points and ranking high on the leaderboard, the study found that the heavy users of Reading Battle became committed to reading and many enjoyed the flow experiences where they seemed to forget about time and discomfort and truly enjoyed the reading process.
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