Teaching & Learning

Staff Professional Development Week

To deepen the concept of outcome-based teaching and to continuously improve the teaching skills and quality of the teaching staff, the Teaching and Learning Centre of MPU organised the Staff Professional Development Week from 28 to 31 May 2024. Experts in education and quality assurance were invited to conduct a series of workshops on topics such as outcome-based teaching and learning, student assessment, and programme review.

Professor Wang Weirong from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences of Beijing Normal University introduced a range of student evaluation methods and described the changes in evaluation methods, emphasising the trend towards diversified assessment. Dr Erica Lau, Associate Director of TPg Academic Development and Quality Assurance & Enhancement at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, discussed the importance of programme review in enhancing the quality of education and shared some examples of continuous programme improvement. She also introduced the essential elements of designing and managing student assessments based on outcome-based principles. The participating teachers actively interacted with the guest speakers, sharing also their own teaching and research experiences.

In addition to inviting peers from mainland China and Hong Kong for productive exchanges, the week also featured workshops and sharing sessions led by faculty members of MPU. In conjunction with their research findings, Dr Wei Wei, Programme Coordinator of the PhD in Educational Technology and Innovation, and Dr Zhang Hongfeng, Assistant Programme Coordinator of the Master of Education (Cultural Communication and Education), discussed the concepts of outcome-based teaching and constructive alignment respectively, and how they can be applied to understand the relationship between student learning outcomes and teaching and learning activities and to develop effective formative and summative student assessment. Dr Pansy Gan, Director of the Teaching and Learning Centre, systematically introduced the University’s quality assurance (QA) framework and explained the necessary elements in the preparation of the University’s QA documents in relation to programme review.

The Staff Professional Development Week has attracted over 250 participants. The teachers highlighted that the workshops had given them a deeper understanding of outcome-based teaching and learning, enabled them to optimise their teaching and student assessment design, and enhanced their teaching skills.