As the person in charge of improving and shaping the University of Science and Technology's education systems, Professor Peter Dobson is often sought for creative solutions. From a two-week study tour of universities in the United States, Professor Dobson has gathered many innovative educational ideas and programmes. He said the tour had encouraged him with the university's activities in Hong Kong. 'We toured universities such as Columbia, Stanford, Harvard and Phoenix, and, in all but a few cases, what these renowned institutions were doing to advance education was similar to projects already being undertaken in Hong Kong.' In particular, the University of Science and Technology is taking the lead in the use of the Internet. Initiated by individual faculties, the Web is being used to improve teacher- student communications. Each course has a Web home page where students can access notes from the classes, lecture materials, and links to other important information on the Internet. This gives students a powerful medium for learning not just their course materials but related information that may prove to be valuable in their working lives. 'We have also found that e-mail links on these home pages is a great way of encouraging students to ask questions of the lecturers. Hong Kong students have a tendency not to ask questions during class and private consultation with lecturers is limited by work schedules. Instructors have reported that e-mail overcomes communication barriers,' Professor Dobson said. 'They are receiving a lot more questions from students via e-mail which is leading to better grades and greater understanding.' Professor Dobson is building on the success of Internet-based educational aids to include forums and discussion lists. 'We will be moving from flat Web pages to computer-based discussion groups. Students and instructors will be able to leave messages for each other to comment on, leading to a healthy collaborative learning environment. In addition to the benefits of group learning, this offers the chance to overcome time limitations of learning at the university campus,' he said. 'We can achieve 'synchronous' learning, getting answers any time, anywhere. It's a big leap forward for us and we'll be bringing in new technologies to help with this programme over the next year.' The university is also developing new teaching facilities through advanced multimedia tools that are being deployed within lecture halls and for students to use in their own time. It recently established the Centre for Enhanced Learning Technologies within the School of Engineering. 'We've put a lot of effort into training our teaching assistants, who are traditionally postgraduate students. Although these students have offered outstanding service in the past - supervising labs, running tutorial sessions and so on - none has had previous teaching training. 'To further improve education quality, we have developed 12 teaching workshops, covering a range of topics for prospective teaching assistants,' Professor Dobson said. 'Each teaching assistant is now required to attend several of the workshops, depending on their duties. The results have been excellent from everyone's point of view.'
