Asia-Oceania Top University League on Engineering(AOTULE) 2016 Conference

Dear colleagues,

It is a pleasure to welcome you to Hong Kong for the 11th The Asia-Oceania Top University League on Engineering (AOTULE) Annual General Meeting.

This year is a very important milestone for HKUST, as it marks our 25^th anniversary. The University’s anniversary slogan is “Innovating Today, Imagining Tomorrow”. We are pleased to invite Deans of Engineering and representatives to this auspicious occasion and to explore the potential collaboration in online education to further improve international partnerships and student/staff mobility.

The Blended Learning (BL) approach has been used extensively in higher education for a number of years. With advances in computer technology, students have new ways to access and interact with both knowledge and people. However, new information and communication technologies do not on their own transform into good learning experiences. Good pedagogy and well-designed courses do.

At HKUST, the BL approach means a blend of online and face-to-face teaching that maximizes the benefits of both methods to help campus students achieve a higher level of learning. The online component of a blended course is delivered through a learning management system such as Canvas and consists of techniques including online video lectures/demonstrations, online activities and online assessments. The face-to-face component is delivered on campus and consists primarily of interactive exercises, group tasks, projects, and discussions. An effective BL approach requires a well thought out mixture of face-to-face teaching, self-study courseware online, synchronous and asynchronous online collaboration and readily accessible online reference materials to create a quality teaching solution. Having said that, it is not necessary for every learning solution to contain all of these learning components. What is most important is to align the learning technologies with an active-learning pedagogy that produces desired learning outcomes.

The high-quality online components developed may also be used for a MOOC delivery where the outreach of a faculty can be enhanced and a University's reputation can be increased.

The annual AOTULE Deans' meeting will run in parallel to the student conference and staff meeting. The theme for the Deans' meeting this year is "Technological Change in Education". The main emphasis in this meeting is to explore our several and collective response to the "avalanche of change", perceived or real, in higher education but, of course, not losing track of our main agenda of mobility.

As for the student conference, student will be divided into several groups to conduct the group project on "Global Programs related to Big Cities", apart from presenting their current research projects. This conference will be a good opportunity for students to interact and be exposed to non-traditional learning techniques which will enhance their learning and ability to communicate with people from different cultures and research fields.

The AOTULE promotes inter-university cooperation through joint programs including an annual DeansÕ meeting, student workshop and exchanges of students and staff, in order to improve the quality of engineering education and the research of the members. It aims to broaden participantsÕ perspectives through education, research and cross-cultural interactions.

May I wish you a very productive stay in Hong Kong. I look forward to exchanging ideas with all our worthy members and enhancing the solid foundations of our collaboration.