HKU Bulletin October 2008 (Vol. 10 No. 1)

A Blueprint for Great Learning The new four-year undergraduate curriculum for HKU is taking shape I t may seem a stretch to link the SARS virus to curriculum reform, but consider this: they both started out as ill-defined situations in which the challenge was not only to come up with the solution, but to identify the key questions that needed addressing. It is a comparison that Professor Amy Tsui, the Pro-Vice- Chancel lor for Teaching and Learning, l ikes to draw when she speaks of the goals for the new four-year undergraduate curriculum, which begins in 2012. “SARS was a very heartbreaking episode for me and for a lot of people in the community,” she said, citing the fear that reverberated throughout the community when it was confronted with an ill-defined epidemic, and the finger-pointing that resulted when no immediate solutions were forthcoming, even as people put their lives at risk to tackle the problem. “I have reflected on what happened and how we could learn from the experience, and I have come to the conclusion that we always think problems are well defined and our job is to solve them. At university, students are often told, here is a problem, go out and solve it. But in real life, problems do not usually present themselves as such; they often need to be identified and defined. “The gap between the learning at university and the situations that students will encounter later on, such as in the workplace, is one of the reasons why employers often complain that university graduates do not seem to live up to their expectations. “What we want students to be able to do is not just to solve problems that have been defined for them, but to address problems that have to be identified and located. We also want them to understand that new problems are created as existing ones are being solved, and that it is in the continual process of addressing them that the world moves forward.” Tsui has been going through a similar process as she oversees the development of the new curriculum. All universities in Hong Kong will switch to four-year undergraduate degrees, up from three years today, and the challenge is how to make the best use of those four years of education. “When you talk of novel situations and ill-defined problems, the territory-wide move from three to four years of undergraduate education, coupled with the shift from the seven to six years of secondary education, is exactly that. We’ve never tackled a transition on such a scale in the community before,” she said. Tsui’s approach has been to hold numerous meetings with academic staff and students from all faculties, to draw on their expertise and understand better what they think is working well in the undergraduate curriculum at HKU, what needs fine-tuning, and what needs overhauling. The results have contributed to the crafting of educational aims and a curriculum structure that will not only provide students with disciplinary knowledge and intellectual skills, but also inspire them to think more deeply about the world and to nurture the core values of a responsible global citizen. The conception of the new curriculum is underpinned by the understanding that it should represent the total ity of students’ learning experiences, in and outside the classroom, and on and off campus. An emphasis is placed on engaging students in experiential learning in which they are confronted with real-life issues. The curriculum is being developed around six educational aims: critical intellectual inquiry, intercultural understanding and global citizenship, communication and collaboration, upholding of personal ethics and critical self-reflection, leadership and advocacy for the improvement of the human condition, as well as tackling novel situations and ill-defined problems. An important component wi l l be the “common core curriculum”, which consists of areas of inquiry that all students will be required to undertake beyond their major field of study. The areas are scientific and technological literacy, the humanities, China studies and global studies, and students will be required to take six common core courses (out of 40 courses needed to graduate). Tsui said the common core would not simply provide introductory-type courses, but equip students with the skills to understand and interpret complex issues that they encounter in their daily lives. For example, they will need to be critically aware of global issues and trends, and come to their own interpretation of statistics as presented in the media and issues such as the social and ethical implications of scientific and technological innovations. “It’s not just about broadening, but rather getting students to understand all the issues that we are confronted with in our every day lives and being able to see these from a number of perspectives, and being able to see the inter-connectedness of human experiences,” she said. The University Senate has endorsed the educational aims and curriculum framework, including allocating 15 per cent of the curriculum to the common core. It has also endorsed English as the lingua franca on campus, which means it would apply to al l campus activities, including student-led ones. “I believe students lie at the centre of the work of this University,” Tsui said. “A university is really there to nurture the younger generation. That is its core mission. “In Chinese, the term university is translated as ‘great learning’. It is not ‘great teaching’. A university is where we want great learning to happen, for the students and the staff as well.” PEOPLE 4 5