Co-curricular activities in general are believed to be useful for students' development, such as improvement in academic performance, higher retention rate, enhancement of social and competency skills, and assistance of youth development and employment. With the expansion of the education sector and the implementation of a new 3-3-4 education system in Hong Kong, the background and training of students is different from the past, so it is worthwhile investigating students' interest, understanding and perceptions about co-curricular activities nowadays in an Asian context. Comparison between the perceptions of sub-degree and degree students is discussed. Similarities and differences are found in both groups of students. Based on the findings, suggestions are made to education institutions in planning their resources on co-curricular activities.
[Copyright of International Education Studies is the property of Canadian Center of Science and Education]

Humanities includes a diverse range of disciplines in which little literature has explored in any depth the desired learning outcomes. This study was designed to articulate and illustrate learning outcomes in the humanities from students' voices and work. Undergraduate students in their final year, postgraduate students and recent alumni from the Faculty of Arts at a Hong Kong university were interviewed individually or in groups of three to four. They discussed their desired and actual learning outcomes in three areas: the overall university experience, studying in the humanities and their studies in their specific majors. The students' comments were grouped into 16 categories of description. Seventy-three pieces of student work were collected and matched to the 16 categories to illustrate students' perceptions. A common set of qualities was found in all the humanities programs. From the data, knowledge is the most valued by humanities students, followed by rational thinking. Accomplishment and self-direction are relatively less mentioned. Further discussion is presented on how and why humanities students value different qualities, based on students voices interfaced with some relevant literature. The findings have been helpful in bringing the student voice into internal discussions about outcomes-based approaches to teaching and learning and how these approaches relate to internal quality-assurance and curriculum-change processes.
[Copyright of Higher Education Research & Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2010.542558 ]

More and more teachers are facing the decision whether they should allow or promote students the use of technology in the classroom. The decision is difficult as there are apparently both advantages and disadvantages in doing either way. In terms of positive impacts, research revealed that the use of digital devices in the classroom setting was capable of facilitating faculty-student interactions and in-class participation, which in turn enhanced engagement and active learning (Fitch, 2004; Partee, 1996; Stephens, 2005). On the contrary, evidence was also identified to show a relationship between notebook use and distraction in class. The pilot study investigated the desirability of allowing digital devices in class in our local context, and to explore the factors that influence the success of the practice. Two studies were conducted with students in teacher-training programmes at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. In the first study, students were allowed to use computers in the lessons (free use) in the whole semester and then they were asked to reflect upon the learning benefits, if any. In the second study, the future teachers were asked to comment openly on the use of digital devices for more guided purposes such as student response system and e-textbook. Results in general revealed that it is indeed a very controversial and complicated issue. On the one hand, many positive learning benefits relating to using digital devices in class are acknowledged. On the other hand, distraction is a major concern as students may use the technology for irrelevant purposes in class. Participants thus were also very conservative about channeling the use of computers in classroom to other academic contexts. The answer to the question whether computers be allowed in class thus is not a simple yes or no but is a series of suggestions concerning when and how to do it more appropriate.
[Copyright of Electronic Journal of E-Learning is the property of Academic Conferences Ltd.

Some past studies find that older students have more confidence in using technology for learning than younger students but some other studies find the opposite result. However, it is found that there are a few researches studying on the age difference in the perception of using technology for learning in Hong Kong. Therefore, the aim of the study is to examine the age difference of confidence in using technology for learning in the Hong Kong higher educational institutions. In this study, it employed a survey methodology to collect a total of 211 questionnaires from one of the universities in Hong Kong. The findings show that older students had more confidence in using technology for learning than younger students.
[Copyright of TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology is the property of TOJET.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://www.tojet.net/]

This study investigated the identification and distribution of perfectionist types with a sample of 111 academically gifted Chinese students aged 17 to 20 in Hong Kong. Three approaches to classification were employed. Apart from the direct questioning approach, the rational approach and the clustering approach classified students using their scores on three constructs of the revised Almost Perfect Scale, which included high standards, order, and discrepancy between standards and performance. Despite the fact that the different approaches yielded different classification results, all three approaches generated profiles of three perfectionist types interpretable as nonperfectionists, healthy perfectionists, and unhealthy perfectionists, suggesting that healthy perfectionists tended to outnumber unhealthy perfectionists and nonperfectionists. Implications of the findings for working with perfectionist students and future research on perfectionism and perfectionist types are discussed.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02783191003587876]