With the rapid development of sophisticated technologies, many innovative e-Learning tools or applications with increased inter-activities and improved features have been adopted in tertiary institutions. This paper serves as a platform for industry and academia to exchange higher education practices in innovative course and programme design. We investigate current practices in tertiary institutions with e-Learning technologies and applications to enhance academics’ teaching excellences and research capabilities in order to achieve social, cultural, environmental, or economic impacts. In particular, we investigate all public universities and one private college in Hong Kong in terms of various e-Learning technologies. The results demonstrate that all these e-Learning technologies for being used in higher education help to enhance teaching and learning experiences, and make it more efficient and effective. Students can also benefit from these e-Learning technologies to become life-long learners. Moreover, by taking a closer look at current e-Learning technology trends, we list some possible e-Learning applications and tools that are expected to surge in the coming years.

e-Portfolios are a form of authentic assessment with formative functions that include showcasing and sharing learning artifacts, documenting reflective learning processes, connecting learning across various stages and enabling frequent feedback for improvements. This paper examines how e-portfolios take up these formative roles to support productive learning. Qualitative findings from interviews with selected first-year undergraduate students at a higher education institution in Hong Kong are reported concerning students' experiences of constructing e-portfolios as assessment tasks. As part of an institutional teaching and learning initiative, e-portfolios were incorporated into three core courses for first-year students. The findings reveal that several conditions necessary to foster productive learning were missing in students' experiences: strengthened formative role of e-portfolios through coherent assessment design; encouragement for students' pursuit of authentic tasks to develop learning interests; engagement of students in reflective and self-regulative learning as an essential learning process; provision of constructive feedback for sustained learning support; and support for students' autonomy through facilitation of collaborative knowledge building. By explicating how the lack of these conditions impeded students' active involvement in e-portfolio tasks and suggesting relevant strategies for teachers at the institution in question, this paper offers implications for harnessing information and communication technology (ICT) to support students' productive learning.

There is now a worldwide focus on the quality of university teaching and yet there is general dissatisfaction in universities with the student evaluation of teaching system. Peer observation of teaching seems to hold much promise in the assessment of teaching quality, but such observation pays little attention to the quality of teaching as perceived by students. One approach to overcome this deficiency is for faculty and students to also partner in the assessment of a faculty member's teaching, with a student trained in observation and feedback techniques acting as a peer in the observation process. This paper describes and evaluates an ongoing student consultant initiative at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. It presents faculty and student observations in terms of the benefits to faculty regarding potential enhancement of university teaching, and the benefits to students especially in terms of close collaboration with faculty and training in consultation techniques. The paper notes that the student consultant initiative has been more popular with students than faculty, and recommends further investigation of the potential of such programmes in Hong Kong higher education.

This study explores two higher education-based language teacher educators' teaching beliefs and how they implemented their beliefs in classroom practice. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews and classroom observation, the findings revealed the teacher educators' multiple and complex beliefs, which were derived from their past experiences and continued to be shaped and transformed through their professional work. The study also shows that while the participants tried to act in accordance with their beliefs in their teaching of teachers, they encountered some contextual obstacles (e.g. the 'publish-or-perish' system) which resulted in the gap between their beliefs and practice. Through their continuous reflections and agentive work, the teacher educators tried to close the gap and facilitate their students' learning to teach. This study concludes with some implications for current teacher education and higher education on how to promote language teacher educators' cognitive learning and continuous development.
[Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

There is a long history of higher education in Hong Kong with the founding of its first university, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), in 1911. Students enrolling in higher education courses in Hong Kong post Second World War were considered elite-type. Since the early 1990s, the age participation rate has increased to 18% for first degree courses, equalling to the expansion of approximately 50% in undergraduates. Changes have been apparent from elitist higher education to mass-type higher education. Another essential development in Hong Kong's higher education sector was the Chief Executive announcing in 2000 that age participation would be doubled to 60% within ten years. This paper aims to historically review the development of the higher education sector in Hong Kong. The problems associated with the processes involved and discussion related to the future development of this sector during this century will also be analysed.

The purposes of this study were to find out the differences in academic efficacy, academic adaptation and psychological adaptation between local, Mainland and international students in Hong Kong Universities and major predictors of the psychological and academic adaptation. In addition it explored the level and effect of contact between non-local students and local students. Questionnaires were used to collect data among six UGC-funded local universities in Hong Kong through SurveyMonkey. Findings revealed that Mainland students reported highest level of academic efficacy, academic adaptation and psychological adaptation, followed by international students and local students. In addition, students tended to interact most with those who were from the same cultural backgrounds. Implications for how university policy can better support their students are discussed.

Professional training and development is a major component of updating teachers' pedagogical knowledge and skills. However, transferring such knowledge and skill may not always be successful. Based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), the present study has developed a model specifying the factors affecting transfer maintenance intention and behaviour. This model was tested with the partial least square approach to structural equation modelling. The results indicate that the TPB-oriented model is able to explain in-service teachers' intention to maintain what they have learned from training in their jobs and their subsequent transfer maintenance behaviour. Moreover, the β coefficients indicate that attitude towards the behaviour was the major predictor of transfer maintenance intention, which was in turn the major predictor of transfer maintenance behaviour. Finally, research implications and practical implications have been provided in this study.
[Copyright of Educational Psychology is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2015.1011608]