Since 2008, outcome-based learning (OBL), a student-centred strategy aiming to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, has been launched as a major initiative among higher education institutions in Hong Kong. When adopting OBL at course level, other than designing the OBL framework, it is also very important to evaluate the effectiveness of the OBL implementation. However, studies focusing on the evaluation of OBL have been rare. In this paper, the authors will report on the evaluation of the implementation of OBL in 17 pilot courses in the English Department in the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Five evaluation instruments were developed, and questionnaire surveys and interviews based on these instruments were carried out to find out both students' and teachers' perceptions of OBL adopted in the pilot courses. The findings suggest that both the students and the teachers hold a generally positive attitude towards OBL, but a number of issues have been raised concerning the successful implementation of OBL at course level.
[Copyright of Research in Higher Education Journal is the property of Academic and Business Research Institute. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://www.aabri.com/rhej.html]

The Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests were translated into Chinese and later fully computerized for research in Hong Kong. The normative data of two cohorts (1994 and 2002) of school children were employed to test the hypothesis that growth in creative thinking occurs in a society or culture during a period of education and curriculum reforms that emphasize creative thinking. Results of multivariate analysis of variance and subsequent univariate analysis of variance supported the hypothesis. Moreover, some interesting gender differences in creativity growth were observed, underlining the fact that boys and girls should be treated differentially to obtain a desirable creativity growth for them.
[Copyright of Creativity Research Journal is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Medical Teacher. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2013.843916]

This study aims to investigate students' knowledge and interest on adoption of IFRS in Hong Kong, the preferred strategy and pedagogy of introducing IFRS, and the usefulness of learning IFRS. The results show that most Hong Kong students are eager to learn IFRS and they understand the positive impact of learning IFRS. The Hong Kong accounting professionals and educators have to develop relevant materials on IFRS.
[Copyright of Journal of Management Research. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/jmr/]

Women business ownership contributes to entrepreneurship quality and diversity. However, the new venture creation rate of females lags far behind that of males. How to increase female entrepreneurship by entrepreneurship education is an important topic in the field. It has been reported that students' entrepreneurial intention is a key to their future entrepreneurial behaviors. This paper aims to empirically compare the entrepreneurial intentions between female and male engineering students with the exertion of entrepreneurship education. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was used as the theoretical basis of this study. A total of 411 engineering students from three universities in Hong Kong, 303 males and 108 females, were involved in this study. The results show that TPB is appropriate to explain entrepreneurial intention of both female and male students. Further, male and female students are different in terms of entrepreneurial attitudes, social norms and entrepreneurial intentions even they experienced entrepreneurial education. This study suggests that teaching strategies to foster entrepreneurial intention of females should (1) emphasize female entrepreneurship, 2) provide female entrepreneurial models, and (3) create an entrepreneurial culture in campus.
[Copyright of Journal of Women's Entrepreneurship and Education is the property of Institut Ekonomskih Nauka.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.ien.bg.ac.rs/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=13&lang=en]

The purpose of this study is to examine how potential customers (students) of tertiary educational institutions perceive the co-branding of such institutions with hotels. This study is an attempt to provide useful insights into the variables that influence evaluation of brand alliances in service sectors, and to discuss implications for institutional and hotel reputation building. Quantitative data were collected from students of post-secondary colleges in Hong Kong by using self-administered questionnaires. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of the six alliances between tertiary educational institution brands and hotel brands. The findings suggest that consumer pre-attitudes toward brand partners and perceived brand fit are positively related to consumer evaluations of the brand alliance. In addition, brand familiarity is found to be important in moderating the relationship between perceived brand fit and consumer evaluations of the brand alliance. This study gives an additional empirical research into brand alliances in service sectors. Future research could also consider evaluating brand alliances from the perspectives of hotel customers. Marketers must carefully consider consumer perceptions of fit and the importance of brand familiarity when seeking allied partners. This study breaks from the ranks of strategic management studies of alliances focusing on the views of managers, to examine brand alliances from the customer perspective. Moreover, it has bridged the gaps between various management and marketing disciplines, showing the applicability of product branding concepts to service branding and institutional reputation building contexts.
[Copyright of International Journal of Business and Management is the property of Canadian Center of Science and Education.
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