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Language support | Reading list | Useful links

Language support

Like many other top universities in the world, the University of Hong Kong has a considerable percentage of international students and academic staff from over 70 countries. English is the lingua franca at the University. If English is not your first language, you may face challenges in teaching beyond those of others, to make yourself understood to your students. The Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES) has developed varied online resources, which could help you continuously better your English competence. They cover academic writing, presentation skills, pronunciation, and vocabulary development. Amongst these resources, the Virtual English website gives you the access not only to the CAES online resources, but also the best online resources from around the world, for your self-directed learning. There is also a range of personal language consultation services available at CAES.

Reading list

Defining goals and structure of a course

• Ramsden, P. (2003). Learning to teach in higher education (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
  This book is one of the bestsellers on teaching and learning in higher education. It is suitable for both new and experienced teachers. Not only will you read from it good practices of university teaching, you will also learn about its underlying theory. Chapter 8 will help you understand the importance of defining goals and structure for a course and how.

Teaching strategies

• Ramsden, P. (2003). Learning to teach in higher education (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
  By reading the Chapter 9 of the same book by Ramsden (2003), you will know better how to use appropriate teaching strategies to facilitate student learning.
• Davis, B. G. (2009). Tools for teaching (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
  This is also one of the bestselling books on teaching and learning. You will find it a practical manual for teaching in any discipline. The topics in the book cover a wide range of teaching strategies and tools. The advice provided is solidly grounded in research and consistently reflects best practices in teaching and learning. As a tutor, you may find the following topics of special interest to you: (1) teaching academically diverse students, (2) learning styles and preferences, and (3) motivating students.
• Felder, R. M. and Brent, R. (2003). Designing and teaching courses to satisfy the ABET Engineering Criteria. Journal of Engineering Education, 92(1): 7-25.
  Professor Felder has taught chemical engineering for more than 30 years. He received professional training in pedagogy before he entered this profession. He wrote many papers on engineering education and is still active in running workshops for engineering education practitioners. In this paper, Prof. Felder provides guidance on instructional techniques, the formulation of course learning objectives and assessment methods to address intended learning outcomes.
• Kvan T.(2000). Teaching architecture, learning architecture. In: Beng-Kiang Tan, Milton Tan, Yunn-Chii Wong (eds.), Proceedings of the Fifth Conference on Computer Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, CAADRIA 2000. National University of Singapore, 181-190.
  This paper is among the few which discuss architecture education. Most importantly, it is based on HKU context.

Assessment & feedback

• Killen, R., & Hattingh, S. A. (2004). A theoretical framework for measuring the quality of student learning in outcomes-based education. South African Journal of Higher Education, 18(1), 72-86.
  This article will help you understand the principles of outcome-based education (OBE), and the relationship between learning outcomes, pedagogy, and assessment. You will learn how to define outcomes systematically and design assessment tasks aligning to them.
• Carless, D. (2007). Learning-oriented assessment: Conceptual bases and practical implications. Innovations in Education & Teaching International, 44(1), 57-66.
  This paper will enable you to see the potential of making assessment the opportunities for student learning. The author introduces in the paper three elements of the ‘learning-oriented assessment’: assessment tasks as learning tasks; student involvement in assessment as peer- or self-evaluators; and feedback as feedforward. You will obtain practical advice on assessment from the reading of this paper.
• Carless, D., Salter, D., Yang, M., & Lam, J. (2011). Developing sustainable feedback practices. Studies in Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education, 36(4), 395-407.
  This article will help you understand the idea of sustainable feedback and how it might be achieved.
• Xu, Y. & Carless, D. (2017). ‘Only true friends could be cruelly honest’: Cognitive scaffolding and social-affective support in teacher feedback literacy. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 42(7), 1082-1094.
  This article presents a case study of developing teacher feedback literacy (the ability of giving constructive feedback to learners).

Useful links

• Teaching and learning @ HKU
  http://tl.hku.hk
• Academic calendar @ HKU
  http://www.adqa.hku.hk/dates-of-semesters.php

Resources on teaching strategies worldwide

• University of Harvard
  https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/home
• University of Michigan
  http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/teachings.php