Abstract
Faculty training in tertiary institutions around the world is receiving increasing attention as it plays a significant role to ensure high quality learning and teaching practices in constantly changing multi-cultural education backgrounds. In the case of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), designing an effective training course to help them deliver content interactively, using student-centered strategies and approaches in a second language (in this case English), becomes critical. Rather than training GTAs in procedural and declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and processes), a shift in emphasis to functioning knowledge, e.g., classroom management techniques, course design, formative and summative peer review, presentation skills, is the focus of this intensive course, which is heavily supported by two educational e-technologies, Echo360 Lecture Capturing System and an asynchronous Discussion Board, hosted under the Blackboard (Bb) Course Management System. Adopting an ethnographic approach in which all the researchers have co-taught this course for at least two years, this paper chronicles the effort of using Echo360 and Bb Discussion Board to support the delivery of course content and assessment tasks that yields reflective practices. Achievement of learning outcomes is evaluated through the use of multiple measures: reflections of course attendees, researchers’ direct observation, and statistics provided by the Learning Management System. Results are very encouraging in terms of significant improvement of graduate students’ presentation skills and self-reflective practices facilitated by Echo360 and Discussion Board.
Highlights
Full time research students in Hong Kong play an important role in supporting learning and teaching activities of undergraduate, and sometimes taught postgraduate programs
In common Confucian culture, especially among Chinese learners, discussion boards have an advantage over other online collaboration tools because They are asynchronous in nature
We have found that the e-learning technologies used have improved students‟ learning outcomes and facilitated reflective practice in teaching and learning
Summary
Full time research students in Hong Kong play an important role in supporting learning and teaching activities of undergraduate, and sometimes taught postgraduate programs. In the case of first-year research students, a common challenge often expressed when surveyed is the lack of prior instructional experience and guidance on classroom teaching (Bomotti, 1999), and the feeling that balancing the complex role of teacher and student is difficult (Rubin, 1993) This situation is exemplified by students from the Chinese Mainland (the majority of our research student/ GTA population at universities in Hong Kong), with Mandarin Chinese as their mother tongue, who usually perceive teaching as solely „delivery of content‟ (Menges & Rando, 1989). At City University of Hong Kong for instance, the majority of full time research students (93.54%) is from the Chinese Mainland while most of the undergraduate student population (94.0%) is Cantonese-speaking local natives Throughout this course (in-class and online activities), non-local research students are encouraged to reflect and compare Hong Kong and Mainland teaching styles, peer – to – peer and student-instructor class interactions, cultural values and the challenges of using English as a medium of instruction (EMI). This is evidenced by a reflection submitted by one of the research students:
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
