The Centre for Information Technology in Education (CITE) is granted by Quality Education Fund (QEF) to conduct a two-year project namely “Learning 2.0: an Online Platform and a Teacher Support Network for Curriculum and Assessment Innovation in Liberal Studies for the NSS Curriculum-phase I” (learning 2.0). It aims to design, implement and evaluate an interactive learning and assessment platform (iLAP) for supporting enquiry learning in Liberal Studies as well as to set up a teacher professional network for facilitating curriculum and assessment innovations.

The “Learning 2.0: an Online Platform and a Teacher Support Network for Curriculum and Assessment Innovation in Liberal Studies for the NSS Curriculum-phase II” project is a two-year project granted by Quality Education Fund (QEF). It is an extension of phase I. Phase II aims to integrate an e-portfolio component in the interactive learning and assessment platform (iLAP) so as to support school based assessment in Liberal studies. It also aims to scale up the teacher professional network to 10 schools and to disseminate innovative practices as well as facilitating the collaborative culture among schools.

This project is funded by the Education Bureau and it aimed at supporting schools on developing and scaling up knowledge building pedagogy, sustaining teacher professional growth, and improving student learning through a knowledge building teacher network (KBTN).

Since September 2008, this project becomes part of the University-School Support Project (USP) under the School-based support services (SBSS) titled "Professional Development Network for Knowledge Building in Schools". The project leaders are Prof. Nancy Law and Dr. Carol Chan, Associate Professor of Faculty of Education. The USP project has started in September 2008 and is expected to be completed in August 2011. A team of expert knowledge-building teachers are seconded to EDB to assist participating teachers in implementing the knowledge building approach together with the project team from CITE, HKU. Six half-time seconded teachers (STs) and more than 60 participating teachers from 25 schools (11 primary schools, 13 secondary schools, 1 special school) have been recruited for this academic year. Knowledge Forum®, which is hosted at CITE (http://kf.cite.hku.hk), is used by teachers and students in the project to facilitate their collaborative knowledge building activities.

Objectives of the project:

• To motivate teachers and students to work collaboratively on developing knowledge building;
• To develop repertories of pedagogies and assessment strategies that facilitate knowledge building;
• To develop a model of teacher network that promotes teacher professional development and quality student learning.
• To equip students with holistic abilities of inquiry, reading to learn, generic skills, teamwork, IT skills, and life-wide learning, etc.
• To foster students’ active learning and higher-order thinking
• To enhance learning and teaching effectiveness

As an extension to the project on "Development of an interactive platform for the consolidation and dissemination of good practices through the Internet in schools", CITE has been commissioned by the Education Bureau to implement phase II of this project and the project has started in January 2006. The aims of the phase II project are as follows:

1. to create a database of practicable pedagogies in schools that have been tested and proved effective for teaching professionals’ reference;
2. to provide teachers and other education practitioners with an interactive platform for discussion and reflection on the uploaded practices;
3. to encourage schools with common interest in any particular case to establish the mode/relationship of inter-schools collaboration so as to further explore strategies on IT applications.

The project was successfully completed in August, 2007. The project comprises two major components. At the first phase, CITE held a series of training course for seconded teachers and research assistants in the 20 identified Centers of Excellence (CoEs) as well as other seconded teachers fully seconded to the EMB who will also be involved in supporting these CoEs. The aim of this course is to provide members of this team the opportunity to gain the requisite understanding and skills on (i) effective uses of ICT for curriculum and pedagogical innovation, (ii) leading and supporting pedagogical change in schools and (iii) action research. The course contents will include methods and techniques in data collection, analysis, case write up and reporting.

At the second phase, i.e. the second component of the project which is to provide guidance to the team of research assistants in the data collection and with their support to collate, analyze and report on the experiences gained by the 20 CoE schools.

The objective of this program is to support school in building their own vision of the potential impact of ICT and the different dimensions of school policy and strategies in supporting the curriculum and pedagogical innovations in the direction of the Curriculum Reform.