Communication-intensive Courses Initiative @ HKU

Abstract

A university-wide initiative called Communication-intensive Courses (CiC) was recently launched at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) to foster a culture of developing communication literacies across the undergraduate curriculum. These courses require explicit teaching of at least two communication literacies (oral, written, visual, and digital) alongside course content. These courses must also meet the University’s expectation of courses that have a teaching and learning environment where learning is active and dialogic, that assessment be both formative and summative, and that feedback be frequent, timely and relevant. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that large classes and demanding research agendas may discourage teachers from participating in the CiC initiative. To address this issue, a group of pedagogy and academic literacy experts were tasked to organise professional development activities to enhance HKU teachers’ communications teaching pedagogy. This presentation reports the activities of the CiC team to assist teachers in developing their Communication-inventive courses. Specifi cally, it presents the framework used to support teachers across various faculties and the collaborative activities undertaken to assist teachers in communication-related assessment task and rubric design. Finally, the team discusses the opportunities and challenges they experienced as they set up and implement the CiC initiative across the university.