Workshop Details

Abstract

Many undergraduate courses teach content but have assessment tasks which test both students’ knowledge of content and how they communicate this. Examples of the communication assessments are an essay, a report, an oral presentation, a poster, or a video. The CIC (Communication Intensive Courses) initiative promotes the teaching and assessment of communication skills alongside content. In this presentation, we will first provide a summary of the communication assessments and what we have learned from the 100+ courses we have badged so far as part of the CIC initiative. Two teachers will then share their experiences of how the CIC initiative has helped them to enhance the assessments in their undergraduate courses.

About the Speakers

Dr. Michelle Raquel is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Applied English Studies. She is the project leader of the Communication-intensive Courses (CiC) initiative since it was launched in 2018. She was project manager of several large-scale inter-institutional language assessment and materials development projects in the Hong Kong tertiary sector. Her teaching and research expertise is language testing and assessment, academic English, and English for specific purposes (ESP) testing.

Ms. Nicole J. Tavares (FHEA) is Senior Lecturer in the academic unit of Teacher Education and Learning Leadership at the Faculty of Education of The University of Hong Kong. She specialises in English language teaching (ELT) methodology and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), and teaches a range of courses on BA&BEd, PGDE, MEd and MA programmes. She is currently MA(TESOL) Programme Director and Coordinator of her Faculty’s English Language Proficiency Tests, a hurdle requirement for graduation for all BA&BEd (Lang Ed) students.

Nicole has published in the areas of online teaching and learning, 21st century skills, using educational technologies in promoting teacher professional development, good ELT and CLIL practices, and Interactive Assessment. She is keen on experimenting with new and innovative pedagogies and enjoys engaging herself in professional dialogues with educators on how research informs her practice through presentations at international conferences such as AERA, AdvanceHE TLC, AsiaTEFL and RELC as well as locally in tertiary institutions, NGOs and schools.

Nicole has received multiple teaching awards, including the HKU Teaching Innovation Award (2020), her Faculty’s Emergency Remote Teaching Award (2020), and HKU Outstanding Teaching Award (2015).

Dr. Evan Pickett is an ecologist, conservation biologist and lecturer with the Faculty of Science. He completed his PhD on an endangered frog in Australia before moving to Hong Kong for a postdoctoral fellowship on bird populations. He then shifted to a teaching role with the Faculty of Science where he teaches a lot of Common Core courses and Biostatistics.