Letters | Hong Kong’s DSE students need our support during time of exams and pandemic

Readers discuss the strain students taking the DSE are facing amid the pandemic and how teachers can effectively incorporate multimedia into their classrooms

Education in Hong Kong

Letters

Published: 11:30am, 8 Mar 2022

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I am writing in response to the article “Hong Kong students’ summer holiday to start on March 7, but international schools, kindergartens granted exceptions” (February 28).

As a local secondary schoolteacher, I cannot imagine myself to be one of those unfortunate candidates in this cohort, dragged into such a mess thanks to the authorities’ incapability of epidemic control during the past few months.

The Diploma of Secondary Education is not solely a benchmark for university admission, but the examination itself is a test of endurance and stress management. When all subjects are crammed into three weeks’ time and many popular electives are scheduled in the second week, students barely have enough time to take a short break between subjects and stay on track.

This is to say nothing of their concern about the possibility of testing positive for Covid-19 and therefore being banned from the exam. Yet if this happens, all their efforts will go up in smoke and they must wait, and revise of course, for another year.

I have heard some adults leaving reckless comments such as, “Come on, you should start preparation early. You should learn to be more flexible.” It seems they might have forgotten how it used to feel when they were 17 or so.

It is unjust to see the Education Bureau’s proposal only from an adult’s point of view. In today’s Hong Kong, where success is often associated with one’s academic achievements, many secondary students only have one goal in mind: to excel in public examinations to help secure a diploma or degree at a tertiary institution.

Are these young people supposed to be trained to anticipate and adapt to all these changes right away? They are humans, not robots.

Combined with the ever-changing conditions around the world, high achievers could find the situation stressful and disturbing, let alone students from less-advantaged backgrounds. Businesses suffer, old people suffer, students suffer – basically everyone in society suffers.

Being an educator in Hong Kong is never easy as one always has to overcome doubts and challenges. Despite all these uncertainties, we have to remind ourselves to just give students our best support in learning and mental health however we can. After all, it is one of the few things we can offer at this critical time.

Justin Chan, Chai Wan

Teachers must use multimedia tools wisely

With respect to Mengqi Wu’s letter “Customise learning with open textbooks” (February 21), I concur with the author’s sentiment on the need to enhance open textbooks to facilitate personalised learning with the support of the Quality Education Fund. This is especially so considering the teaching and learning environment in the time of Covid-19 and given the maturity of e-learning technologies.

With the growing demand for inclusive education, our teachers are facing challenges in adopting suitable textbooks that cater for learner diversity. Many textbooks cannot be easily customised or adapted because of copyright restrictions.

In the case of the Open English textbooks developed by Hong Kong Metropolitan University, with support from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, enhancing the textbooks by adapting their content and incorporating multimedia components would enable teachers to conveniently modify the materials according to their school’s specific requirements.

Unfortunately, in many instances, the use of multimedia technology such as games and augmented or virtual reality only results in superficial learning. Although these technologies can capture students’ attention and boost motivation, they fail to help students effectively acquire in-depth knowledge.

It is important that these multimedia components incorporate instructional design strategies that are fit for pedagogical purposes. We cannot solely rely on technology or multimedia tools to enhance print-based learning materials for e-learning.

With the paradigm shift from teacher-centred to learner-centred education in recent years, teachers play a vital role in co-creating learning and teaching content as they know their students well and understand their learning needs. Their contribution and ownership of the materials will be an integral part of e-learning projects.

Dr Eva Tsang, director of Advancement of Learning and Teaching, Hong Kong Metropolitan University

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