Campus Review Vol 30. Issue 04 | April 2020 | Seite 13

campusreview.com.au
international education
Hong Kong
dispatch
Rethinking
teaching and
learning during
the COVID-19
disruption.
By Ian Morley
COVID-19 has compelled higher
education institutions in many
countries to suspend classroom
teaching.
In Hong Kong, the transfer to online
tuition commenced after the spring term
had started (in February of this year), and
from then on, on-screen instruction has
been mandatorily undertaken with Zoom;
for example, at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong (CUHK).
However, Zoom is new to most
academics, and consequently a sharp
learning curve has been experienced:
teaching staff have had to resourcefully
utilise the platform, swiftly ascertain
what its multiple functions are and, to
boot, figure out how to exploit them for
the purpose of implementing student
learning scenarios.
Additionally, only through actual teaching
practice did it become possible for scholars
to detect the strengths and flaws of the
activities they employed within the Zoom
context and so, by association, unlock
any capacity to thoroughly weigh up
students’ opinions of the e-learning they
were receiving.
While the shift from classroom teaching
to online teaching can test a lecturer’s
technological and pedagogical know‐how,
the psychological impact of the changeover
should not be downplayed.
Thus, as disturbing as it is to accept that
we presently live and work within a global
narrative defined by a deadly pandemic, in
this unforeseen circumstance there is the
troubling necessity to likewise recognise
that during the current academic calendar,
local classroom teaching may not return.
In light of this prospect, three
fundamental issues must be deliberated
by teachers. First, what to teach online in
the coming weeks and months. Second,
how to teach it. And, third, how to fittingly
assess students’ application of the newly
gathered knowledge.
The importance of these matters, clearly,
are amplified once the learners’ feelings are
taken into consideration.
As a case in point, from my own
discussions with Arts Faculty students
at CUHK, they bemoan the absence of
the social component of on-campus
scholarship. They generally perceive online
learning tasks to be not particularly deep
in nature and, critically, believe that the
quality of on-screen teaching is inferior to
classroom-based instruction.
Given this mentality, a conundrum for
teachers is created: What assessments,
particularly end-of-course assessments,
can be developed that are, on one hand,
fair to accomplishing learning goals set
out at a course’s inception, and on the
other, flexible enough to provide allowance
for the observations and everyday
challenges students experience as an
outcome of distance study?
Broadly speaking, irrespective of what
a course’s content is, and in whatever
environment teaching occurs in, an
elemental constituent of curriculum
design is the creation of an assessment
scaffold that objectively measures students’
knowledge development during and at the
wrapping-up of a scholarly program.
At CUHK, given the impossibility of
deferring courses’ end-of-term assessments
to a later date, and to assist teaching staff
to plan final online tests in order to mitigate
the public health risk of large numbers of
students being together in exam halls, in
mid-March 2020 guidelines were issued.
Three options were advised: online
exam with invigilation, online exam without
invigilation, and no exam.
Yet to proficiently compose an online
exam is no straightforward task. Indeed,
its design will not only be affected by what
has been taught in the milieu of a course
but also shaped by the familiarity and prior
experience, or not, the teacher has of
e-assessment planning.
Furthermore, at CUHK, which is an
institution that promotes outcomebased
education, how may this particular
teaching-learning paradigm be woven into
online learning assessment exercises?
From my own perspective of early-2020
developments within higher education
in Hong Kong, the changeover to online
instruction has generated substantial
unexpected challenges, one being my
capacity to know if students are studying and
amassing knowledge at the ‘conventional’ –
that is, classroom-based – level.
In view of this quandary, I have had to
ask myself how I may proactively devise a
new balance between my online teaching
aspirations and the students’ e-learning
viewpoints and home-centred studying
difficulties.
In consequence, I have redesigned my
lectures and tutorials (given they were
composed originally for the classroom
environment). I have revised my use of
the learning management system (LMS
- Blackboard), how I apply software like
Panopto, and how I support and assess
the students.
In some respects, this modification has
been unavoidable: How must a teacher
cater for student concern as to the fairness
and feasibility of (online) assessments in the
context of severe social disruption?
In summing up, the unscheduled shift
from classroom to online teaching opens
up a vast potential for negative impacts
upon students’ ability to enlarge wisdom.
But, the opportunity to manage a new
kind of teaching-learning process should
provoke any lecturer to reappraise the basic
means and purposes as to why they teach.
Moreover, as I have directly discovered,
the switch from classroom to online
teaching has triggered my need to enlarge
comprehension of how my students learn
and, in alliance, my decision-making process
as to why I assess them in the way that I do.
Ultimately, what has become apparent in
the disruption of COVID-19 are crucial but
formerly taken for granted questions: “What
is the purpose of assessment, and how may
I better utilise its functions?” ■
Ian Morley is an associate professor in
the Department of History at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong.
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