6th Meeting with Supervisor
Date Aug 1, 2011
Time 16.00 - 17.30
Reviewed and revised the structure of presentation for the confirmation seminar
Abstract:
Since the turn of the century, the emergence of sub-degree sectors has made higher education in Hong Kong more accessible. However, that achievement does not translate well to student engagement.
Although researchers (mainly in the United States) have reported various findings on student engagement at community colleges, there is a dearth of studies in the Hong Kong context, particularly in studies that would allow for student engagement benchmarking on the sub-degree level.
In the literature on community colleges and student engagement, scholars lean on different benchmarks to prove the effectiveness of student engagement for undergraduate students, mainly in the US. What needs further investigation is how student engagement affects the development of effective learning in community colleges in the local context, i.e. Hong Kong.
In recommendation #21 of the "Aspirations for the Higher Education System in Hong Kong" report, the UGC senses the urgency of spearheading surveys or assessments to measure the overall college experience of students. In addition to revealing language proficiency, the assessment results may be adopted for improving educational quality, especially pertinent to student learning, thus enhancing accountability and transparency of the institutions (HKUGC, 2010).
As a community college instructor, I have a keen interest in probing the forces driving student engagement in the sub-degree sector in the territory. This study aims to identify, examine and anaylze the factors that contribute to or obstruct student engagement in the learning environment of a Hong Kong community college.
A mixed method research approach will be adopted throughout the process. The data will be collected through surveys, document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and class
observations.
Because the local associate degree sector was established only a decade ago, my contribution is a pioneering study. I believe that this research area contributes to the understanding of learning styles of sub-degree students, and bears useful information for practitioners at community colleges and higher education policy makers in Hong Kong. This study, I believe,
will assist Hong Kong in positioning student engagement, as an effective tool for measuring the quality of associate degree education, thus shaping the purposes and visions of all our local
community colleges in the years ahead.
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7th Meeting with Supervisor (Confirmation seminar)
Date Aug 4, 2011
Time 15.00 - 16.30
Venue: Rm 202, Runme Shaw Bldg, HKU
Key points
- Proposal got confirmed
- asked to chronicle all the questions raised during the seminar:
1. What's your definition of student egmt?
2. Is it descriptive case study, or exploratatory case study? Why only CCLU?
3. Why select only 3 benchmarks of CCSSE for your study?
4. What conclusion do you want to draw from data?
5. What if only 15, or 400 respondents to your HKCCSSE? Why lock the
sample size at 200?
6. Rationale behind 15 students as interviewees?
7. Gerry: how to "indigenize" the tool in order to reflect the uniqueness
of the study?
8. Research questions have to be refined:
a) instead of "level of SE", am I talking about "overall pattern"?
b) instead of "factors", should I say "possible factors"?
9. Is Astin's definition different from the other 3 definitions of SE?
10. How am I going to address both research questions?
11. Will CCLU have enough school activities?
12. Why use GPA as a benchmark if I'm refering students to activities
being engaged inside and outside of class?
13. How are you going to support the framework of your questionnaire, which will be
adapted from the CCSSE, to be culturally relevant to the situation of Hong Kong?
14. How will you establish the construct validity and the reliability of the
questionnaire you developed?
15. Whether you study will be limited to the descriptive analyses to answer the question of 'what' only. What will be the dependant variable of the study, such as 'GPA'?
