I remember the first time I got in touch with on-line learning was in my last year of senior high school. I bet you all know the fierce competition of College-entrance-examination in Mainland China; every student went to different “Private Tutors” after school in order to get good grades for that exam. Instead of go to “Real Tutors”, I went to “Virtual Tutors”. It was like an on-line tutoring school, there were always best teachers for different subjects there for you; if you got a problem or cannot figure out a particular question, just go to their website and write down your questions, they will get back to you with detailed answers in few hours. Now, this kind of tutoring is not unusual, and some even will say that is not efficient. I absolutely agree with that. But think about it in China 10 years ago, no one could deny that this kind of on-line tutoring platform is new and effective, and of course making good profit. (You need to pay 1000RMB/semester for such services.)
When I began my UG study in Hong Kong, I got a chance to experience a more dynamic on-line learning system. The system I used was called “WebCT”, professors will upload the lecture notes and all kinds of learning materials on that system for students to download and student can take small quizzes on that system too. I believe the functionalities are more that these two I just described, but as a user of “WebCT”, I am not that benefit from it.
Later in year 2007, our University announced that they will no longer use “WebCT” for teaching and learning platform, and they gonna switch to another internally developed system called “Learning Management and Evaluation System”. I guess it was not only the expensive license fee the University needs to pay for “WebCT” that bothers, also the effectiveness and system control needs to be improved by using the new system. It was not an easy task for both faculties and students to transfer from “WebCT” to “LMES”, though the new system provides more functionality. Users were confronted with totally new interfaces and there are lots of new functions you need to learn how to use.
(Picture Source: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology LMES 2.5 All rights reserved.)
After a painful transfer phase, users are gradually adopted the new system and try to utilize all the functions. LMES, as an internal developed teaching and learning system, is more integrated with HKUST’s teaching and learning style and quite innovative in terms of interface design.
As what I have experienced from using on-line teaching and learning systems, I realized that when the communication through systems become smoother and user generated contents are become more effective, the system then can be fully utilized.
By Sophie Gu Jiaying
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