This paper reports the implementation of PBL in a student preparatory course at City University of Hong Kong in 1999. In Hong Kong, as well as elsewhere, students often enter university with limited understanding about university education and ineffective learning strategies which can create frustration and difficulties in their transition to university life. There is a pressing need for universities to provide students with support to increase their chances of experiencing success during this critical period of transition. In responding to this need, City University of Hong Kong started in 1996 to offer first-year students a course "Learning to Learn" to help prepare them better for university study and lifelong learning.
Students who have attended the course find it worthwhile and beneficial. Research on the course offered during 1997 to 1999 (Kwan, 1998 and 1999a) has indicated positive effects on students' learning attitudes and skills. In particular, students were more aware of the importance of being an active learner and managing their study time. They also reported an increase in their self-efficacy in these two areas. However, if this course is to develop students as lifelong learners, students need to go through a process in which they are helped to develop the process skills which are essential for lifelong learning (Kwan, 1999b). Since PBL is a powerful strategy for providing a learning environment that "embodies most of the principles that we know improve learning" (Woods, 1996), the course team decided to have the course adopt a PBL format in 1999.
Preparatory tasks, including restructuring the curriculum, making resources available, developing problems, piloting, and preparing tutors and students have been completed Students who participated in the Pilot Programme of the PBL version of "Learning to Learn" have reported that they have become better learners. They have strengthened their attitudes towards lifelong learning. They also believe

The project entitled Higher Order Thinking Skills Targeted for University First-Year (HOTSTUF) was the concerted and coordinated efforts of teaching and non-teaching staff of a liberal arts university to stimulate, foster, and enhance higher-order thinking of two cohorts of first-year university students during the two-year duration of the project. The project aimed at creating a learning environment that was conducive to developing a culture of thinking, particularly thinking skills and good thinking dispositions. To achieve this objective, a series of programs subsumed under the four-component framework of the project were organized: (A) Thinking-in-Action Program, (B) Thinking-in-Operation Workshops, (C) Websites for Integrative Thinking, and (D) Formative and Summative Documentation, This paper briefly describes the diversity and scope of the programs of these components, the impact of these programs on the student participants, and the limitations of the project.