Teaching development grants final and financial report: Bring your own device (BYOD) for reflective engagement of learners in digital classroom

The advocacy of learners’ reflective learning and the trend of digital classrooms place new demands on academic/teaching staff in the higher education sector for transforming pedagogical practices along with the growth of e-learning in recent years. The proposed project aims to enhance the competency of HKIEd academic/teaching staff in promoting learner’s reflective engagement in accordance with HKIEd e-learning strategies. The proposed project, adopting the design-based approach, will conduct a two-year research on the professional development of implementing an e-learning pedagogy of “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)” for enhancing excellence and innovation in learning and teaching, as well as enhancing flexibility and choice for learners. With the set-up of a community of practice (CoP), the 15 proposed project investigators will develop their own BYOD pedagogies which encourage our learners to use wireless-connected portable computing devices for their own learning needs such as accessing interactive learning platforms (e.g., Socrative), participating in social learning networks (e.g., Edmodo) for course learning, and collecting data (e.g., capturing pictures). Each CoP member will continuously implement their own BYOD pedagogies throughout three rounds of trial teaching, and progressively refine the BYOD pedagogies with reciprocal sharing and support from other CoP members of the project. The proposed project will analyze lecturers’ lessons videotaped and reflective journals to collect evidence of what and how the BYOD pedagogies are implemented in course lessons for increasing learners’ reflective engagement. It will also conduct questionnaire surveys and focus group interviews with learners to understand their overall perceptions as well as in-depth opinions on the suitability and effectiveness of the BYOD pedagogies. Focus group interviews will also be conducted with CoP members of the project to reflect on their competency in designing and implementing BYOD pedagogies for promoting deep learning engagement among learners. The research outcomes will lead the proposed project to recommending designs of pedagogical initiatives favorable for learner’s reflective engagement in learning in digital classrooms, as well as approaches to sustainably scaling up professional development for academic/teaching staff on e-learning in higher education.