高中通識教育科將於2009年9月推行。通識教育科強調運用探究式的方法來進行教與學，教學內容以一系列當代的議題為中心。這探究式的學習為教師帶來新的挑戰，包括：如何引導學生批判性地閱讀，在互聯網中尋找有用的資料，在探究學習過程中提出問題，並作以證據為本的探究；如何支援學生之間的協作；如何有效地分辨不同學生所作出的努力，並為學生在探究的不同階段提供適當的回饋，使評估能發揮促進學習和量度學習水平的雙重作用。讓學生主導，在網上進行探究式協作學習的另一挑戰是老師所要面對的沉重工作量。本文旨在介紹《學習2.0》，一個利用網絡2.0（Web 2.0）新科技研發的網上學習及評估平台用作支援新高中通識教育及「專題探究」的學習。
Liberal Studies as a mandatory subject in the New Secondary School curriculum will be implemented starting from September 2009. This subject adopts an inquiry-based approach and the content is structured around a range of important contemporary issues. Teachers face new challenges in teaching and assessing this subject: how to guide students to read critically, find useful information from the internet, formulate inquiry questions and to undertake evidence-based inquiry; how to support student collaboration and at the same time be able to assess the efforts and achievements of individual students; and how to provide adequate feedback to students at various stages of inquiry such that assessment can be both formative and summative. In addition, facilitating students to work autonomously online generally brings heavy workload on teachers. This paper introduces the Learning 2.0 project which comprises the development of an open-source online learning and assessment platform using Web 2.0 technology to provide support for the learning and teaching in the NSS Liberal Studies Curriculum.
[Copyright of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre Journal is the property of Hong Kong Teachers' Centre at http://www.edb.org.hk/hktc]

In Hong Kong and Canada, indeed globally, slogans about learning to learn and teaching for 21st-century knowledge and skills are common. However, there are few examples of how teacher education courses or programs are responding to these new demands. In this paper, we propose a framework for designing teacher education premised on the theoretical perspective of knowledge building. We describe two courses, a pre-service teacher education in course Hong Kong teachers and a joint graduate course for Hong Kong and Canadian teachers. In both cases, participants engaged in knowledge-building discourse mediated by a computer-supported learning environment. We present the design and illustrate how the teachers were able to work as collaborative inquirers and knowledge creators in a knowledge-building community. Implications of knowledge building for teacher development as related to socio-cultural contexts are discussed.
[Copyright of Teaching Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10476210500527907]

Despite emphasis and progress in developing collaborative inquiry in computer-supported collaborative learning research, little attention has been given to examining how collective learning can be assessed in computer-supported collaborative learning classrooms, and how students can have agency in assessing their own collaborative process. We propose that assessments should capture both individual and collective aspects of learning and be designed in ways that foster collaboration. We describe the design of student-directed electronic portfolio assessments to characterize and "scaffold" collaborative inquiry using Knowledge Forum™. Our design involved asking students to identify exemplary notes in the computer discourse depicting knowledge building episodes using four knowledge building principles as criteria. We report three studies that examined the designs and roles of knowledge building portfolios with graduate and Grade 12 students in Hong Kong and Canada. The findings suggest that knowledge building portfolios help to characterize collective knowledge advances and foster domain understanding. We discuss lessons learned regarding how knowledge building may be fostered and provide principles for designing assessments that can be used to evaluate and foster deep inquiry in asynchronous online discussion environments.
[Copyright of Journal of the Learning Sciences is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508400701193697]