Virtual Teaching Collaboration with DePaul University

By Vienne Lin

One more meaningful collaboration formed! CoP – ITL is happy to announce that we successfully facilitated a connection between Mr. Patrick Leung, our HKU-affiliated member, and Prof. Matt Ragas from DePaul University, USA. The initiative, Global Learning Experience, is a virtual exchange programme offered by DePual University, and aims to provide students with transformative intercultural experiences through web-based instructional technologies.

Such collaboration enables teachers and students located in different countries to learn together by some simple web-based technologies and a bit of travelling, if necessary. Typically, the two teachers work in partnership with designing their curriculum. In particular, the intercultural elements that can be better learnt when students are provided with virtual exchanges with their counterparts in the other university. The virtual exchanges may take place in various forms. For example, students from the two universities can work asynchronously on one set of common problems and present their work to seek feedback from the other side. Alternatively, they can be paired up and support each other in specific aspects of the learning process.

Good news was that Matt visited the University of Hong Kong on March 24 to 30 this year and co-taught one of the English classes with Mr. Patrick Leung. Students were found attentive and relished the opportunity to learn from the guest lecture. Patrick is going to visit Matt in the near future and deliver a few guest lectures in DePaul. These reciprocal guest lectures benefit students from both universities.

This whole partnership story goes back to months ago when Dr. Roselyn Du, our project co-leader, introduced Matt to CoP – ITL as Matt expressed an interest in collaborating with a Hong Kong partner on virtual global learning. The collaboration would not have been possible without Dr. Du’s kind referral. We would also like to thank Prof. GianMario Besana and Ms. Rosi Leon from DePaul University for supporting this collaboration as well as Dr. Theresa Cunanan and Ms. Promail Leung for joining an online discussion on potentials for further collaborations based on the Global Learning Experience initiative. CoP – ITL will keep an eye out for more collaborative opportunities and pass along the messages to you. Please stay tuned with us!