Promoting self-directed learning in the curriculum: training new teachers

Theme: Research into Practice in the Four-year curriculumIn the new curriculum being implemented for the 4-year curriculum at The University of Hong Kong, an important emphasis is being placed on out-of-class learning which, in many parts of the curriculum, may contribute up to two-thirds of the students’ learning hours. In the new English academic literacy courses being developed by the Centre for Applied English Studies, a major component of the out-of-class learning will be self-directed learning. To enhance its impact, self-directed learning is being directly integrated into many of those new courses as a tangible component that will be monitored by teachers and will contribute to success in the assessment of other parts of the course. However, …postprin

In-service teacher development for facilitating learner autonomy in curriculum-based SALL

This paper aims to identify challenges in-service language teachers are facing when they are called upon to teach on a course with a selfaccess language learning (SALL) component, and the support and training that they perceive necessary to help learners to maximize their SALL experience. There is a large body of literature discussing ways to build, reinforce and measure learner autonomy (LA), and attempts have been made to integrate SALL into the curriculum with various levels of success. The success and failure of those curriculum-based SALL programmes were often attributed to learner motivation, learner training, learner strategies, peer influence and availability and quality of resources in self-access centres. It appears that teachers’ roles in curriculum-based SALL have not received as much attention as it deserves. Despite the presence of some useful models for teacher development and training initiatives to help teachers take on new facilitating roles afforded by an “autonomous” classroom in curriculum-based SALL, on-going in-service teacher training seems to be lacking in most schools and universities. Very often teachers with very little or even no experience or knowledge about SALL are asked to promote LA in their classes while training for those in-service teachers regarding SALL is insufficient. This paper reports the findings from interviews with EAP instructors teaching on a course with SALL being a major component in a university in Hong Kong. A three-tier in-service teacher development programme called OWL which consists of “Orientation for new teachers”, Workshops on LA” and “LA Virtual Resource Centre” is recommended

A Pharmacy-led Bar-code Assisted Medication Administration System - Changes to the Pharmacy Process and User Attitudes

Oral Presentations: Theme III - Reproduction & Development and Public Health: abstract no. 3.1