The BOLT Project Newsletter Issue 8
BOLT
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Dr Marshall Yin guides his English for Scientific Communication learners writing a short science report for a non-specialist audience through an innovative use of learners creating their own websites. Marshall focuses on the concept of a digital reputation to up the ante for students writing for a general audience on their newly-created Google Sites.
Stories
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news
BOLT Stories The BOLT Project - it's been a great journey! The BOLT Blended Learning Symposium @ PolyU Migrating from a blended course to fully online Upcoming Events
- The BOLT Project –
written by
The BOLT Project began in June 2014 and at the end of this month, its UGC-funding period will end. During these four years, we’ve seen some great collaboration and excellent work across the five BOLT partner universities, along with collaborations with non-project teams from CUHK, CityU, and CUHK’s KEEP Project. The collaborations have grown during this project period and reached their culmination in the BOLT Blended Learning Symposium @ PolyU that you can read about elsewhere in this issue.
The relationships formed between participants and colleagues from across Hong Kong in the BOLT Project have been multiple, fruitful and I hope longstanding. My personal thank you to everybody involved whose hard work has helped make the project a success.
For a brief list, the BOLT Foundation Course has attracted 220 participants, 108 colleagues at EdUHK have participated in hands-on blended learning professional learning sessions/consultancies, 197 participants have joined HKU’s Interactive Online Learning module, nine conference papers and a book chapter have been published, the project was shortlisted for the QS Reimagine Education Awards; the list goes on…
it’s been a great journey!
… and perhaps the most important fact is that we don’t stop here. PolyU will be continuing to host the BOLT Foundation Course and the course’s Module 1 is also available as a fully online SPOC (Small Private Online Course) on the KEEP Platform, open to all and with a fascinating new video series to support the Learning Innovation Plan development. BOLT at EdUHK is now BLUE (Blended Learning for University Enhancement), moving from a faculty to university-wide initiative. Additionally, we have high hopes that the collaborations that we’ve nurtured during the project period can keep going in the ‘real world’ once the project ends. We are looking to run the Foundation Course collaboratively, including the successful Summer BOLT and the BOLT SPOC is already opening doors for future collaborations in Hong Kong and beyond. And finally, we will be looking at longitudinal research into long term impact. So a lot achieved so far and a lot more still to achieve in the future to promote pedagogically sound blended learning implementations across Hong Kong universities.
What have we achieved in these four years?
Mr. Darren HARBUTT The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
The five BOLT partners then shared their blended learning practices. Darren Harbutt from PolyU presented the overall engagement and impact of the BOLT project and the transformation of the BOLT Foundation Course from a blended course to a SPOC. Prof. Lim Cher Ping from EdUHK showed how blended learning has been successfully applied in faculties. Dr Theresa Kwong from HKBU focused on how colleagues innovated in their own teaching after taking the BOLT Foundation Course and other HKBU professional development. Dr Leon Lei from HKU showed how a flipped classroom approach integrated with technologies helps students engage in learning actively. Finally, Nick Nokes from HKUST reviewed its blended learning approach and previewed the new blended format to be applied in the university. We were also glad to invite guests from different universities to share their blended learning practices. In addition to the five BOLT partners (PolyU, EdUHK, HKBU, HKU, HKUST) taking a close look into the blended learning practices, CUHK and CityU presented their blended learning implementations such as applying flipped classroom approaches in Hong Kong Higher Education and using virtual reality in teaching an environmental course. Read more about the practices shared by the universities here.
The BOLT Blended Learning Symposium @ PolyU was held on 3 May 2018, in which colleagues from different universities shared their blended learning practices to celebrate the successes of the project as it nears its end. The keynote speaker Dr Maren Deepwell, the chief executive of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) gave a critical reflection on blended learning in Higher Education and the BOLT partners from PolyU, EdUHK, HKBU, HKU and HKUST presented the impact and sustainable goals of the project. The symposium started with a keynote from Dr Deepwell who gave a talk on Critical perspectives on blended learning. Maren spoke of how technologies have been changing our daily practices, of the roles digital technologies play in Higher Education, and also of how digital content, communications and collaborative environments can help enable learning beyond classroom. Maren concluded on the importance of people as enablers and drivers in this digital landscape and reminded us of the importance of reflection and evaluation to sharpen one's teaching and learning in future.
The symposium examined the global trend of teaching with technologies and the development of blended learning in Hong Kong. It was eye-opening to hear many successful blended learning case studies. I am impressed by those significant impacts on students’ learning under blended learning and teaching approach among universities. Thank you to colleagues for sharing their rewarding experiences and participation that colours the BOLT project with a successful finale. We look forward to seeing more colleagues applying the blended and online learning and teaching approach and continuing to share stories after the project ends.
Miss Arinna LEE The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Following the symposium there were two extended workshops - “Next Level Livestreaming: Assemble a Mini Studio to Broadcast your Class” hosted by PolyU and “Build your own AI tutor (Coding Free!)” by HKU. The first workshop introduced how to use Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to do high quality broadcasting on a budget, while the other explained how to design chatbots for facilitating online teaching and learning. Both workshops provided hand-on practice and feedback showed participants could use the software without difficulties under guidance and enjoyed the sessions.
Migrating from a blended course to fully online
In creating a cohesive Learning Innovation Plan activity, a new case study strategy was developed. Participants still have regular Learning Innovation Plan tasks each unit, but now, along with those tasks is a series of four case study videos which feature a discussion with Dr Patrick Ting, a BOLT graduate from the School of Optometry. Dr Ting walks participants through his process of developing the five areas of his Learning Innovation Plan. His completed Learning Innovation Plan is provided to guide students through a successful example. In the final course unit, students still submit their Learning Innovation Plans which will be looked over by the BOLT team before issuing a certificate of completion for the course.
Migrating the BOLT course from blended to fully online not only allowed us to create a new format for a different audience, it also gave us the opportunity to revisit the content and add new tools, techniques, and learning theories we have discovered over the past few years. BOLT: Designing Blended Learning can be accessed at: https://course.keep.edu.hk/course/145913
Mr. Seth NEELEY The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
After months of hard work, the BOLT team launched a fully online BOLT course called Designing Blended Learning. The BOLT Foundation Course has been running as a blended course for several years, utilizing the free Coursesites platform from Blackboard. For the new fully online version of BOLT, we had to reconceptualize many course aspects before building the new course on OpenEdX from KEEP.
As Open EdX is designed as a MOOC/SPOC platform, we had to create many more videos to keep students engaged in a fully online course. Previously, in the blended course, there were two face-to-face sessions, so we took the most valuable and relevant content from these and brought it into the online course as videos and/or text pages. We needed to focus on consistency in the style of videos, the number of videos in each unit, and the placement of videos throughout the units. Certainly, video production and editing were the most time-consuming aspect of migrating BOLT from blended to fully online. The face-to-face sessions also had many activities which had to be reworked for the KEEP course. Tools such as word clouds,
By far the biggest change in the BOLT online course is the new format for the Learning Innovation Plan. In the blended course, participants were tasked with creating a personal innovation for use in their own classroom using blended learning tools and techniques. This was done through weekly tasks which used discussions, peer feedback on Learning Innovation Plans, and a final submission to the BOLT course instructors. Since the fully online BOLT course will be running constantly, there will not be cohorts of students, so peer feedback and discussion were not an option.
clouds, one-minute papers, polls, multiple choice questions, Padlet, and peer instruction were used to create meaningful interactions for participants which focused on reflection and active learning. Creating a knowledge check for each knowledge point was a priority to ensure comprehension and to keep students engaged by doing something instead of always watching or reading something.
Mr. Darren HARBUTT Miss Arinna LEE Mr. Darren HARBUTT Mr. Seth NEELEY Miss Arinna LEE Dr. Charlie YEUNG Miss Birley CHAN Mr. Anthony HO Mr. Kong CHAU Mr. Plato CHUEN
UPCOMING
BOLT NEWS TEAM
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- International Conference on Open and Innovative Education (ICOIE) 2018: Find out more: http://icoie2018.ouhk.edu.hk/e-expo.html
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