This paper reports and discusses the results of a study aimed at automatically categorising teacher feedback on student writing. A total of 3412 teachers’ written comments on 90 students’ draft essays were collected from an EFL course offered by a Hong Kong university during the first semester of 2016/17. The data were primarily used to design and implement an automated tool to classify teachers’ comments with respect to a taxonomy of their characteristics. The findings of this study show that the performance of the automated tool is comparable to that of human annotators, suggesting the feasibility of using the automatic approach to identify and analyse different types of teacher feedback. This study can contribute to future research into the investigation of the impact of teacher feedback on student writing in a big data world. Copyright © 2018 International Journal of Information and Education Technology. All rights reserved.

This paper reports and discusses the findings from a study exploring the use of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for teaching and learning at a university in Hong Kong. Seventy-one undergraduate students enrolled on an English course participated in the study. A pedagogical framework is proposed to guide the design of BYOD-mediated lessons, and the potential of BYOD pedagogies to support teaching and learning is examined. Learning gains from BYOD-mediated lessons are reflected in students’ assessment results. Some merits and challenges associated with BYOD-mediated learning are emerged from students’ focus group responses. The findings contribute to an expanded understanding of the BYOD experience across educational settings.

This paper discusses the findings of a research study investigating user acceptance of bring your own device (BYOD) practice to support teaching and learning in a Hong Kong university. Forty-four undergraduate students and two teachers participated in the study. To collect their ratings of agreement with respect to several BYOD-related issues, student participants were asked to complete pre- and post-user acceptance questionnaires at the beginning and at the end of a 13-week semester. Post-event focus group interview sessions were also organised to further elicit students’ and teachers’ views on the use of personally owned devices for learning. While most of the findings from this study support the use of BYOD in higher education, a number of concerns about its implementation are raised. Insights derived from this research will help inform pedagogies, research and practices in BYOD-mediated learning environments.
[Copyright © 2016 by the University of Georgia.]

In its latest IT in Education Strategy, the government of Hong Kong is committed to develop an online resource bank of curriculum-based digital resources for supporting learning and teaching in school education. The study reported herein aimed to conceptualize the framework for developing such online resource bank in Hong Kong. For collecting solid information from a wide spectrum of relevant stakeholders, 12 sessions of focus group discussions were conducted with school leaders, teachers of major subjects, students, parents, government officials, and educational publishers in the school education sector in Hong Kong. The results found that teachers in Hong Kong were experienced in using digital resources, in particular PowerPoint, video and animation, for supporting subject teaching and learning. The results also asserted the need of an online resource bank in Hong Kong for teachers to accurately access curriculum-based learning and teaching resources. Based on the expectations identified in this study, three options are recommended for the development of the target online resource bank. The first option suggests the compilation of digital entities, such as electronic texts, presentation slides, images, videos and animations, for curriculum delivery. The second option suggests the organization of the digital resources into teaching schemes for delivering subject curricula, especially for those subjects with limited textbooks available in the market. The third options suggests the compilation of learning materials, such as guiding worksheets, with digital resources for students, especially those with average and high learning motivation, to conduct theme-based or project-based self-regulated learning.

This paper reports and discusses the findings from the first phase of a research study concerning the use of mobile technologies for teaching and learning within 10 schools in Hong Kong. Implementation plans devised by the schools were evaluated by an extended framework for analyzing mobile learning with a view from teachers' perspective. Initial finding reveals that teachers could contrive limited learning activities involving the use of mobile technologies in a range of subject areas within school environment. Insights derived from the finding highlight a need to guide teachers towards cultivating a more student-controlled and socio-constructive learning environment mediated by mobile technologies.
[Copyright © 2010 IEEE. Reprinted from 2010 6th IEEE International Conference on Wirless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies in Education (WMUTE), pp. 142-145. This material is posted here with permission of the IEEE. Such permission of the IEEE does not in any way imply IEEE endorsement of any of the Hong Kong Institute of Education’s products or services. Internal or personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution must be obtained from the IEEE by writing to pubs-permissions@ieee.org. By choosing to view this document, you agree to all provisions of the copyright laws protecting it.]

This study explores the influence of digital portfolio on reflective practice of prospective teachers (PTs) with the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework (TPACK). A total of 36 PTs studying in a teacher education course (one-year full-time) at a tertiary education institute in Hong Kong took part in the study. Blended learning approach was adopted to facilitate the completion of digital portfolio with various applications of Web services as a pedagogical tool. At the end of the course, the PTs completed the same questionnaire again as a post-test. Results showed that engaging PTs in digital portfolio integrated with different levels of Web services can increase their degree of readiness and maturation in different dimensions under the TPACK framework. The findings shed light on the development of teacher readiness for their entering of teaching profession in terms of technical, pedagogical and content knowledge individually and holistically, and further cultivated a higher degree of sustainability in reflective practice for the prospective teachers.
[Copyright © 2015 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.]

This paper reports and discusses on the initial stage of a study aiming to explore the relationship between students’ learning styles and their acceptance of using Second Life (SL) for learning. Par- ticipants in this study involved a small group of undergraduate students (N = 17) taking a Visual Arts course called ‘Digital Imaging’ at a university in Hong Kong. They were asked to create and showcase their own digital artwork in SL. Furthermore, they were also required to present their work and critique peers’ work in SL. Their learning styles were measured by the Index of Learning Styles (ILS), whereas their acceptance of Second Life for learning was evaluated by a questionnaire designed by the author. Preliminary findings of this study reveal that most participants were identified as visual learners (i.e. the ones who prefer to see in graphical/video representation). However, active learners (i.e. the ones who prefer to try something out to see how it works) were found more likely to accept the educational use of SL.
[Copyright © 2012 SciRes.]