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.

This paper reports an in-depth observational study looking into how two learners, with different levels of competence in Chinese writing, went about using an online database for improving their writing of Chinese. The two learners were given a task to correct some erroneous sentences, which requires them to consult a large repository database of authentic sample sentences with common errors and suggested modifications. Interestingly, it was found that the more competent learner could quickly identify the categories of errors and devise a strategic plan on what to look for. In contrast, the learner weaker in Chinese failed to notice plausible errors and could only search for the given sentences in a pattern-matching manner. This indicates that simply providing the database as such to the learners is not enough and further the facilitation of the instructors to help learners to learn to identify the errors is far more important.

This study describes a web-based portfolio system in a Hong Kong teacher education context in which on-line tool was used to facilitate student teachers' reflection on their field experience during teaching practice. Assessment rubric was integrated into the web-based portfolio platform. Student teachers created and revised their reflective statements and artifacts according to pre-defined and self-defined learning domains for professional development. Automatic notification feature was also built in the system so that whenever a student teacher posted something on the platform, the supervising tutor was notified thus enhancing communication between the supervising tutor and the student teachers. Feedback and comments from both lecturers and student teachers were shared in a forum and such data were tracked by a database in the system. Preliminary finding shows that the web-based portfolio system enables the lecturers to give timely and informative feedback and the development process of such a portfolio encourages student teachers to think reflectively and to become a self-regulatory learner.

Education reforms have made important structural changes, in particular, the inclusion of Arts Education among the Key Learning Areas in the school curriculum and the launch of a five-year information technology (IT) in education strategy . This has generated the need for a strong field-based leadership that would bring together various stakeholders in education to collaborate on initiatives encouraging and supporting educational innovation in the reformtargeted areas. This paper describes an initiative within the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) called Alliance for Educational Innovation which plays a leadership role in implementing new visions of teaching and learning in cultural subjects. It discusses its several lines of work in areas such as teacher collaboratives, professional development, information dissemination, and development of educational technology resources that will contribute to the improvement of cultural subjects education in technology-rich environments.

Given the advancement of information and communications technologies (ICT), a number of ways of building learning communities in schools have been developed in recent years. Realizing the impact of this new learning approach, six primary schools in Hong Kong engaged in building learning communities in science curriculum. During the science project works, students from different schools participated in knowledge construction using Knowledge Forum, a computer mediated communications (CMC) platform. This paper reports the results of the analysis of students' discussion and interviews of students as well as teachers to explore the processes of knowledge construction and the role of ICT from the different ways that students and teachers experienced in building learning communities through Knowledge Forum. Implications for pedagogical change will also be discussed.

Comprehension skill is an important aspect of conceptual change in science learning. Researches have shown that low academic ability students who received comprehension training can perform just as well as the high academic ability students. Students' comprehension skills can be improved through a number of ways: text construction, multimedia presentation and comprehension strategies. In the present article, I will describe and discuss several ways of improving text comprehension, hence fostering conceptual change, via on-line text reading.

This paper reported an investigation into the non-response cases in student evaluation of teaching (SET). Data were collected through an online system called COSSET during regular SET exercises and through specially designed questionnaire surveys. Two kinds of response rates were studied. One is sectional (class) response rate which is the percentage of students in a section (class) who successfully complete the SET questionnaire. The other is individual student response rate which is the percentage of SET questionnaires completed by an individual student in a single SET exercise. Results showed that sectional response rates are affected by various factors relating to the data collection process and students' background. Individual student response rates are affected by various factors including students' background and attitudes.

While the teacher's role is generally recognized to be important in supporting knowledge building, it is an undeniable fact that most teachers do not have a deep understanding of what knowledge building is, or even the experience of engaging in knowledge building. This paper reports on a study of students' collaborative inquiry conducted on Knowledge Forum® under a situation where the teachers were generally supportive of the educational idea but did not have the exp ertise or commitment to engage in sustained facilitation of the learning process. The findings reveal that students will still occasionally be able to engage in knowledge building discourses even without teachers' facilitation. Students' ability to engage in meaningful exploration of ideas depends very importantly on whether they can locate inquiry questions that are within their zone of proximal development. This facilitation role is even more important when the students involved have relatively lower academic achievement.

This paper reported a project that initiated the development of electronic portfolio among in-service teachers of Postgraduate Diploma in Education. Teachers were encouraged to integrate portfolio development process with multimedia strategies, for the purpose of enhancing reflection on learning and teaching, as well as developing IT skills. Teachers' e-portfolios were analyzed to find out the major content teachers tried to include in the portfolios and the different multimedia strategies teachers used in the process of portfolio construction.