Virtual Research Learning Center [ HOME ]
Building UG Research Skills and Digital Literacy

Funded by the University Grant Commission (UGC) of HKSAR under the "Special Grant for Strategic Development of Virtual Teaching and Learning".

• Implementation timing
  July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2023
  
  
• Implementation party
  • Principal Investigator: Dr. Ka Fu Wong, Principal Lecturer, HKU Business School
  • Co-Investigator: Dr. Olivia Leung, Associate Professor of Teaching, HKU Business School
  
  
• Brief description and background:
  
  Existing UG research opportunities focus mainly on senior year students, for example final year research reading courses. Currently absent is the support on freshmen and junior year students’ research interests and curiosity. As a result, it is not uncommon to see their research interests and curiosity just die off before they advance to their senior years of studies.
  
  This proposal aims to nurture and support junior UG students’ research interests and curiosity by equipping them with basic yet necessary research skills through the activities of a virtual research learning center. Through the center, students will mainly engage in reading and reproducing the research of others in videos. Indeed, a good understanding of other’s research is believed an essential step of learning to conduct one’s own research.
  
  A virtual UG research learning center will be established to house a collection of teaching and learning materials (esp. videos) which are produced following a systematic syllabus of research skill trainings, such as how to comprehen research papers, critically identify research questions, effectively conduct relevant literature reviews, structure and present the logics behind research hypotheses, processes, and tools, and clearly interpret and explain the outcomes and significance. This training will help students better understand the research of others and then possibly be able to propose research projects of their own at later dates.
  
  Students could practice the research skills they learnt at the center by reading short newspaper articles based on their own interests and curiosity (starting with HKEJ newspaper articles published by HKU Business School colleagues https://www.fbe.hku.hk/research/thought-leadership/hkej-column/), and reproducing them into short videos. We focus on newspaper articles because they are often short and target the general public, and thus can be understood by most junior UG students. We focus on the production of short videos because it has become an important mean of communication. Starting with newspaper articles written by our HKU Business School colleagues helps improve communication and interaction between students and teachers, and thus potentially incubate future UG research projects.
  
  In the process of reading and reproducing the research into short videos, students will have to understand the background under which the articles were written and the logical reasoning of the articles, and double check and update the data/information cited in the articles. Students will communicate online with the authors of their chosen articles or the PI/Co-I of this proposal to receive feedback on their understanding of the articles. After their initial understanding of an article is approved, students can go to the virtual center to learn how to creatively produce a video to communicate their works to the general public. Student’s videos in good quality will be posted on the School’s webpage, together with the original articles written by School researchers. Students successfully completing the project with excellence will be recruited as center tutors to assist students in the following year.
  
  It is our hope that the student’s videos published in a webpage will add to their UG study portfolio and serve as a positive feedback to their research interests and curiosity. The videos will also help promote the research of our colleagues to the public, our own UG students included.
  
  
• Intended deliverables
  • A virtual UG research learning center, where students could learn from each other and pass their research knowledge and experience to the next cohort of students.
  • A collection of teaching and learning materials (esp. videos) following a systematically designed syllabus on basic research skills for UG students.
  • Videos created by students for knowledge exchange.
  • Students who are capable of becoming center tutors for the future cohorts.