bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has taken the lead in making the 'virtual classroom' a reality.

  Business students who work and are not able to attend a lecture can now log on to the lecture hall from their computers at home or office, have audio-visual contact with their classmates and take part in classroom discussions.

  Students who access the FabWeb (Faculty of Business Web) site can also review previous lectures at the click of a mouse.

  The service is the first permanent Internet-based link of its kind set up by a university in Hong Kong.

  The project took off when the Faculty of Business recently started broadcasting lectures from a part-time MBA programme on the university's homepage.

  The faculty, which plans to extend the service to include other courses, expects the university's various schools and departments to follow suit until the whole university is 'digitalised'.

  'The virtual classroom breaks many barriers and makes the learning process richer and more flexible and dynamic,' the dean of the Faculty of Business, Professor Richard Ho Yan-ki, said.

 Professor Ho also called for the Government to encourage the 'virtual university' concept by funding large-scale online courses.

  Project leader Dr Christian Wagner said the project initially sought to establish a low-end online service that could do the job within the available resources.

  'Our solutions are designed to be cheap for students, but not necessarily for the faculty of business.'   The faculty used off-the-shelf business-solution software, including a $50,000 broadcast program and $150,000 multi-user server software.

 Two lecture rooms have been equipped for the service and two more will be ready in the autumn to allow video-conferencing between more than 100 students in class and up to 260 others off campus.

  Dr Wagner said the total investment by September would exceed $3 million.

  'One important feature of the project is that the components of our solution are scalable, which means we can keep upgrading the service as better versions are released,' he said.

  Even high schools could afford a basic version of the solution created by CityU.

  But he warned that the technology was still new and required careful planning to gain the acceptance from students who required ease-of-use and lecturers who feared the technology might interfere with their teaching.

  He stressed that the live lecture video-conferencing was not designed to encourage absenteeism from classes among full-time students.

  A part-time MBA student who installed a video camera on his computer in his office said the live online lectures from the Global Information Systems Strategy course saved him valuable lecture time.

  'I usually arrive more than one hour late for the 6:30 pm Wednesday lecture because of my working hours.

  'Now, I'm able to participate in the whole lecture from my office or watch the lectures I miss when I'm on business trips,' Opal Chung Oi-lun, a project manager in an IT consultant firm, said.

  The project also opened the door for a host of online activities to encourage more interaction within the university community.

  Among the popular student-run activities on FabWeb (http://fabweb.is.cityu.edu.hk/fabweb/lobby) are TechnoTalk, which answers students queries on computers and a weekly talk show.

  The lively Chat with Chris and Yuk, which started in March, discusses various topics of interest to young people, including human relations.

 The site, which has received more than 11,000 hits since the initial prototype was posted late last year, also features competitions, news and information on courses and staff.



CityU's 'virtual classroom' now the real thing