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The U21 Programme in Global Issues offers a unique form of transnational education which combines campus-based and on-line study options from leading international universities. HKU students can enrol for this programme as part of the extensive whole-education programme offered by the University, and this month sees some of the University's bright young students, including some Early Admissions Scheme (EAS) students as well as some of the new International Business and Global Management degree students, start the U21 programme. As is well known, most of the top EAS students join HKU, and these students have the ability to take extra credits beyond their degree curriculum. The International Business and Global Management degree, just started this year, has in its first intake jumped straight to the number one position in Hong Kong if academic results are considered in terms of the 'A' and 'AS' level results of the admitted students. The U21 Programme has attracted these top students, although it is only one of several additional learning opportunities made available for these students. The popularity of such a programme for HKU students is clearly evidenced from the fact that the programme was overenrolled within a few days of its announcement to a small portion of the undergraduate population. As one of the students, Andy Tsui, commented, "I wholeheartedly appreciate the setup of this course because it could broaden my horizon and understandings on 'global citizenship'. I hope I will learn more on the ideas of 'globalization' throughout this course."
As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile, so it is necessary for graduates to be equipped with knowledge and competencies that will enable them to work and participate as global citizens, creating pathways to careers with overseas or multinational employers. They must be aware of the benefits and challenges of globalization, and they must be culturally sensitive to those from other parts of the world. Universities started to respond to these demands by creating valuable exchange programmes, where students live on the campuses of other universities for a semester or two. Such exchange schemes have been particularly valuable and the numbers of students participating has steadily increased over the years. HKU will send some 650 students on exchange this year, all with generous scholarships from the University's donors, to such universities as Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, UCLA, Helsinki, NUS and the Australian National University, and will bring around 700 such students to the campus in Pokfulam. However, this student mobility programme is but a small part of the internationalization of education at HKU. Opportunities now exist for HKU students to go on study tours abroad, to take up internships overseas or on the Mainland, to take part in international competitions and events, and to attend summer schools (such as those at Berkeley, or those organized by U21), or to go on adventure education courses abroad (there is one being planned for Antarctica). There are international events held on campus, while just over one place in every five in the halls of residence is now taken up by an international student. Taken together with the postgraduate students, there are now close to 2000 non-HK students on campus, bringing with them, as they do, cultural and linguistic diversity.
The U21 Programme in Global Issues adds yet another dimension to this internationalization strategy. It enables students who cannot presently go on exchange to work collaboratively with their peers from around the world through the internet. They can give their own perspective on these global problems, and try in the process to understand the views and perspectives of others. The pedagogy, however, for such courses, is not limited to text or video on the web and projects to be handed in during the course. This old fashioned approach to on-line education has now been superseded by one that provides learning support and on-line resources for students at all times, where students work collaboratively by forming coursework teams to carry our projects, where they each day add to bulletin boards or blogs to help them carry their ideas forward and to communicate these ideas to other students in the team, where teachers join in the discussions at regular intervals to help guide student learning, but where the students do have a high degree of independence over how they chart their learning and construct their understanding of these complex issues. While this approach to online education has been used by early adopters, for some students, this is the first time that they have engaged in such learning. Lily Chan, one of the second year EAS students studying Government and Law at HKU said, "I really look forward to this first experience of distance learning!"
Although the numbers of such students for the first two pilot years will be limited to 125, the pedagogy is certainly scalable, as shown by the now 1000+ students who have joined the U21Global on-line postgraduate courses. U21Global is the e-learning arm of the U21 consortium, offering on-line courses, currently primarily in management education (MBA). Its reputation for quality e-learning is rapidly developing in the academic world, because of its innovative approach to education, pedagogy and assessment, as well as the outstandingly positive evaluations by students of this new approach to distance education. HKU professors as well as developers from the HKU Centre for the Advancement of University Teaching have already spent some time at the U21Global headquarters in Singapore to learn about this approach, and the new courses that HKU will be providing for the U21 Programme in Global Issues (one on security issues, developed by Lucy Cummings of the Department of Politics and Public Administration, and one on the information society developed by Cindy Chu of the Department of Sociology) will be available for students from around the world at the start of 2006.
The course that the students on this programme are starting is one offered by UBC, on Introduction to Global Citizenship. It covers what it means to be a "Global Citizen", the challenges of intercultural communication, diversity and multiculturalism, the concept of a civil society, and an introduction to a healthy society, globalization, world trade and poverty, consumerism, and sustainability. The education revolves around student discussions led by UBC teachers, who are described by one of the HKU students, Stephen Mui, an EAS student from Kwun Tong Government Secondary School, as kind, helping him to find resources and guiding his participation. The pedagogy is also based on case-based learning, with students required to participate in weekly topical discussions with peers from different disciplines and institutions. Andy Tsui, a first year EAS student from Queen's College, now studying Actuarial Science at HKU, said, "It's really different from my 'required' conventional lectures which just teach you something from the textbooks. To be more precise, there are no fixed teaching materials for topics taught in each module… we need to read a lot on the internet and from the websites suggested by the courses. We do not just need to understand the ideas given by the authors. We need to integrate and comment a lot on others' opinions, as well as to work out our own points of view. There's no model answer for this course. So we are trying to learn to be a good thinker, not a good answering machine on certain questions....".
A group of Deputy Vice-Chancellors and Pro-Vice-Chancellors from the participating universities have been working for about two years on the format and pedagogy for this programme to bring it to fruition. Professor John Spinks who has been leading the HKU team on this project, said "We have been driven by a vision of an educational world without borders where large numbers of students can collaborate in a spirit of genuine interest in other's views and opinions. We believe that this systematic approach to e-learning will be an exemplar for future education. It is a good example of what international university consortia can do to add value to our undergraduates' education in ways that would be impossible for individual universities alone". It is hoped that the collaboration between students from different parts of the world, and a curriculum that allows students to take courses at a university in a different country or continent without having to move from Hong Kong, will sensitize students to understanding different cultural perspectives on global issues, thus helping them to become true global citizens.
Professor Spinks, Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor, will be able to answer questions on this programme at spinks@hku.hk.
HK's Best Take Global Education Programme
30 Sep 2005
This month sees the start of another new venture in the internationalization of higher education. The Universitas 21 (U21) network of leading research-intensive universities from around the world, all with reputations for quality learning environments, recently launched a new Programme in Global Issues, where modules are taken by undergraduate students from HKU, in collaboration with fellow students from UBC, Nottingham, Melbourne and Auckland universities. The modules, many of which are being currently developed, will all be centred on critical problems of current global importance, such as poverty, sustainability, human rights and international law, security, and global health, all issues that should form part of an understanding of world issues by today's graduates.
The U21 Programme in Global Issues offers a unique form of transnational education which combines campus-based and on-line study options from leading international universities. HKU students can enrol for this programme as part of the extensive whole-education programme offered by the University, and this month sees some of the University's bright young students, including some Early Admissions Scheme (EAS) students as well as some of the new International Business and Global Management degree students, start the U21 programme. As is well known, most of the top EAS students join HKU, and these students have the ability to take extra credits beyond their degree curriculum. The International Business and Global Management degree, just started this year, has in its first intake jumped straight to the number one position in Hong Kong if academic results are considered in terms of the 'A' and 'AS' level results of the admitted students. The U21 Programme has attracted these top students, although it is only one of several additional learning opportunities made available for these students. The popularity of such a programme for HKU students is clearly evidenced from the fact that the programme was overenrolled within a few days of its announcement to a small portion of the undergraduate population. As one of the students, Andy Tsui, commented, "I wholeheartedly appreciate the setup of this course because it could broaden my horizon and understandings on 'global citizenship'. I hope I will learn more on the ideas of 'globalization' throughout this course."
As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile, so it is necessary for graduates to be equipped with knowledge and competencies that will enable them to work and participate as global citizens, creating pathways to careers with overseas or multinational employers. They must be aware of the benefits and challenges of globalization, and they must be culturally sensitive to those from other parts of the world. Universities started to respond to these demands by creating valuable exchange programmes, where students live on the campuses of other universities for a semester or two. Such exchange schemes have been particularly valuable and the numbers of students participating has steadily increased over the years. HKU will send some 650 students on exchange this year, all with generous scholarships from the University's donors, to such universities as Oxford, Cambridge, Berkeley, UCLA, Helsinki, NUS and the Australian National University, and will bring around 700 such students to the campus in Pokfulam. However, this student mobility programme is but a small part of the internationalization of education at HKU. Opportunities now exist for HKU students to go on study tours abroad, to take up internships overseas or on the Mainland, to take part in international competitions and events, and to attend summer schools (such as those at Berkeley, or those organized by U21), or to go on adventure education courses abroad (there is one being planned for Antarctica). There are international events held on campus, while just over one place in every five in the halls of residence is now taken up by an international student. Taken together with the postgraduate students, there are now close to 2000 non-HK students on campus, bringing with them, as they do, cultural and linguistic diversity.
The U21 Programme in Global Issues adds yet another dimension to this internationalization strategy. It enables students who cannot presently go on exchange to work collaboratively with their peers from around the world through the internet. They can give their own perspective on these global problems, and try in the process to understand the views and perspectives of others. The pedagogy, however, for such courses, is not limited to text or video on the web and projects to be handed in during the course. This old fashioned approach to on-line education has now been superseded by one that provides learning support and on-line resources for students at all times, where students work collaboratively by forming coursework teams to carry our projects, where they each day add to bulletin boards or blogs to help them carry their ideas forward and to communicate these ideas to other students in the team, where teachers join in the discussions at regular intervals to help guide student learning, but where the students do have a high degree of independence over how they chart their learning and construct their understanding of these complex issues. While this approach to online education has been used by early adopters, for some students, this is the first time that they have engaged in such learning. Lily Chan, one of the second year EAS students studying Government and Law at HKU said, "I really look forward to this first experience of distance learning!"
Although the numbers of such students for the first two pilot years will be limited to 125, the pedagogy is certainly scalable, as shown by the now 1000+ students who have joined the U21Global on-line postgraduate courses. U21Global is the e-learning arm of the U21 consortium, offering on-line courses, currently primarily in management education (MBA). Its reputation for quality e-learning is rapidly developing in the academic world, because of its innovative approach to education, pedagogy and assessment, as well as the outstandingly positive evaluations by students of this new approach to distance education. HKU professors as well as developers from the HKU Centre for the Advancement of University Teaching have already spent some time at the U21Global headquarters in Singapore to learn about this approach, and the new courses that HKU will be providing for the U21 Programme in Global Issues (one on security issues, developed by Lucy Cummings of the Department of Politics and Public Administration, and one on the information society developed by Cindy Chu of the Department of Sociology) will be available for students from around the world at the start of 2006.
The course that the students on this programme are starting is one offered by UBC, on Introduction to Global Citizenship. It covers what it means to be a "Global Citizen", the challenges of intercultural communication, diversity and multiculturalism, the concept of a civil society, and an introduction to a healthy society, globalization, world trade and poverty, consumerism, and sustainability. The education revolves around student discussions led by UBC teachers, who are described by one of the HKU students, Stephen Mui, an EAS student from Kwun Tong Government Secondary School, as kind, helping him to find resources and guiding his participation. The pedagogy is also based on case-based learning, with students required to participate in weekly topical discussions with peers from different disciplines and institutions. Andy Tsui, a first year EAS student from Queen's College, now studying Actuarial Science at HKU, said, "It's really different from my 'required' conventional lectures which just teach you something from the textbooks. To be more precise, there are no fixed teaching materials for topics taught in each module… we need to read a lot on the internet and from the websites suggested by the courses. We do not just need to understand the ideas given by the authors. We need to integrate and comment a lot on others' opinions, as well as to work out our own points of view. There's no model answer for this course. So we are trying to learn to be a good thinker, not a good answering machine on certain questions....".
A group of Deputy Vice-Chancellors and Pro-Vice-Chancellors from the participating universities have been working for about two years on the format and pedagogy for this programme to bring it to fruition. Professor John Spinks who has been leading the HKU team on this project, said "We have been driven by a vision of an educational world without borders where large numbers of students can collaborate in a spirit of genuine interest in other's views and opinions. We believe that this systematic approach to e-learning will be an exemplar for future education. It is a good example of what international university consortia can do to add value to our undergraduates' education in ways that would be impossible for individual universities alone". It is hoped that the collaboration between students from different parts of the world, and a curriculum that allows students to take courses at a university in a different country or continent without having to move from Hong Kong, will sensitize students to understanding different cultural perspectives on global issues, thus helping them to become true global citizens.
Professor Spinks, Senior Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor, will be able to answer questions on this programme at spinks@hku.hk.
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