CAES Annual Report 2019-2020

19 CAES ANNUAL REPORT 2019 – 2020 18 Communication-intensive Courses Initiative In 2018, a teaching development grant funded the launch of the Communication-intensive Courses (CiC) initiative to support HKU’s existing communication agenda. This is an institutional project involving the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL), the Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES), and the Common Core Office. A communication-intensive (CI) course is an HKU undergraduate course that consists of a syllabus with components that explicitly develop communication-related knowledge, skills and attributes. It also specifically develops at least two out of four communication literacies: oral, written, visual and digital, with 40% of the course grade assigned to communication-related assessment tasks. On completion of a CI course, students receive a CiC badge which is visible in the Academic Achievement Profile (AAP) and the HKU mobile app. In 2019-2020, a number of professional development activities took place in order to promote CiC to teachers who may wish to badge their courses and provide professional development to current CiC- badged teachers. Our most popular event is the CiC Course Design Workshop which runs every month. In this workshop, teachers are given an overview of the principles of a CI course. They also have an opportunity to redesign their courses to embed communication teaching and learning. In addition, three summer workshops were organised with each featuring written, oral, or digital literacy. Guest speakers were invited to deliver these workshops. The events for 2019-2020 culminated with a sharing event (Join- the-conversation) where three teachers from Faculties of Social Sciences, Education, and Science shared their experience teaching visual communication in their CI courses. As of 31 August, 2020, there are 62 communication-intensive courses that are in various stages of the badging process. In the future, we hope to continue to badge courses, to build a community of practice for CiC teachers and to promote the teaching and learning of communicative competence at HKU. As the initiative further develops, we are hoping to work with students who are taking or have taken a number of CiC courses. Faculty Number of courses Architecture 7 Arts 6 Business and Economics 5 Dentistry 2 Education 12 Engineering 6 Law 4 Medicine 8 Science 8 Social Sciences 4 Total 62 Number of CI-badged courses per Faculty Professional Development CAES strongly believes that good professional development isof vital importancetobringabout the best possible student learning outcomes. At CAES, professional development (PD) occurs in Teacher Learning Communities (TLCs), which aims to bridge the gap between research and practice and create opportunities for problem-solving among staff. The communities create a culture of participation across CAES that brings teachers together to share, reflect and learn from one another in our work. This has been particularly crucial in the past year as we have all faced unprecedented challenges with teaching and learning activities taking place online. The PD seminars listed below reflect the abovementioned aims with all presenters and facilitators from CAES. Teachers are often members of several communities including teaching teams, core teams, project teams, interest groups, mentorship and ad hoc partnerships with colleagues. These communities could be as small as two colleagues working together or large teams comprising most CAES teaching staff members. Participation is not only limited to TLCs. In order to further develop communities, colleagues are encouraged to apply for funding to attend local and overseas conferences and can also bid for funding to bring in outside expertise or go on a duty trip abroad. 11 September, 2019 Philip SMYTH and Patrick LEUNG Professional Development Framework at CAES 18 September, 2019 Phil SMYTH and Patrick LEUNG Co-creating a Process for Teaching Team Meetings 25 September, 2019 Phil SMYTH and Patrick LEUNG Open Forum for PD at CAES 2 October, 2019 Patrick LEUNG and Philip SMYTH Peer Observation as a Form of Collaborative Partnership 23 October, 2019 Lillian WONG and Philip SMYTH Conference Presentations as Professional Development 30 October, 2019 Joanna LEE, Cezar CAZAN, Lisa CHEUNG, Aditi JHAVERI, Eleanor KWAN, Colin TAIT, Laura WAKELAND and Doris WONG CAES Professional Development Fund Sharing: PC Duty Trip 6 November, 2019 Karissa MUSE, Wilson CHOW and Charlie LEUNG Getting to Know Our New MMCs 22 January, 2020 Patrick LEUNG and Philip SMYTH Documenting Peer Observations for Formative Purposes 19 February, 2020 Philip SMYTH, Patrick DESLOGE, Karissa MUSE, Patrick LEUNG and Aditi JHAVERI Online Learning and Teaching via Zoom 25 March, 2020 Philip SMYTH and Patrick LEUNG Online Learning and Teaching: Exploring Good Practices 1 April, 2020 Philip SMYTH and Patrick LEUNG Effective Multimodal Feedback Strategies 8 April, 2020 Philip SMYTH, Michelle RAQUEL and Lorena LEIGH Sharing of Good Peer Feedback Strategies 22 April, 2020 Philip SMYTH and Patrick DESLOGE Podcasting as a PD Opportunity PD Sessions Offered in 2019-2020 (Semester 1 and Semester 2)