Dear Fellow Students,
Updates to Students from the College Management
Time flies and Christmas is around the corner. Hope you have been doing well in the last few months. With 2020 coming to a close, we are pleased to highlight in this issue the practice of teaching and learning in the first semester and to share with you some key developments in the year ahead.
Teaching and Learning
Thanks to the concerted efforts of colleagues and support of the ITSO, programme delivery in the last few months has been operating smoothly amidst the prolonged development of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mixed mode of teaching, i.e. on-campus and on-line classes, would be continued until further notice. While you are busily working on assignments and preparing for coming examinations, the College is planning for a review exercise with teachers invited to share their experience in conducting on-line classes and to exchange ideas to address learning problems and feedback collected from students.
As the key stakeholders, you have also been engaged or involved in periodic review exercises of the College in this quarter, e.g. Teaching Evaluation Questionnaire and Student-Staff Consultative meetings held at programme level. With your ratings and feedback collected, the College could monitor and examine regularly the effectiveness of teaching and learning and to identify areas in need of improvement. You may also wish to know that as part of usual practice of the Mentoring Programme, the biannual Mentor and Course Lecturer Meetings were held in October when each Mentor collected comments and observations from Course Lecturers on students’ performance and progress for review and improvement of our guidance and support.
Quality Enhancement Support Scheme
As announced by the Student Development Office (SDO) earlier, the learning project titled “A Multi-dimensional Approach to Narrow the Learning Gaps among Students” is in the pipeline for launching in January 2021 after months of preparation. It is a 2-year project funded by the Quality Enhancement Support Scheme (QESS) of the Government.
If you are in quest of means to enhance your learning capacity or solutions to address your learning deficiencies, don’t miss the valuable opportunity to participate in the project activities to be rolled out soon. We have engaged appropriate expertise, including professionals in communication and management, as well as educational psychologist and counsellor to design tailor-made training workshops for enhancement of your capacity in different dimensions, including people skills, organizing skills, learning skills, self-image and self-control, attention and concentration, and academic achievement. As you can see, the workshops will be of different varieties and will cover areas and training not provided in your existing learning programmes. We have high hopes on the project which will benefit participants with value-addedness in both skill sets and competitiveness as a whole. So stay tuned for further announcement of the SDO on the QESS project.
Programme Development and Re-accreditation
The College continued to make progress in new programme development mentioned in the last issue. Approval status of the Bachelor of Christian Ministry Programme is confirmed in principle, pending clearance of a few pre-conditions for launching in September 2021 as planned. Panel visit for the accreditation of the Bachelor of Education in Early Childhood Education Programme was finally confirmed to be held in July 2021. At sub-degree level, accreditation exercise for the Higher Diploma in Social Work (HDSW) Programme will be held in March 2021. Recognition assessment of the Programme by the Social Workers Registration Board (SWRB) will follow in November 2021.
Besides making efforts in new programme development, the College is heading towards a busy schedule of preparation work in 2021 to seek re-accreditation and recognition review status for some existing programmes, including two HD Programmes (Psychology and Counselling, and Transformative Business Management) to be re-accredited in December 2021, and the Bachelor of Social Work Programme to be reviewed by the SWRB during the same site visit mentioned above in November 2021.
Maintaining a Safe and Clean Campus
The 4th wave of the pandemic has been imposing immense threat to public health. In support of the Government to combat the pandemic, the College has displayed its Venue QR Code in the campus for use of the “LeaveHomeSafe” COVID-19 exposure notification mobile app. Along the line of maintaining the campus as a safe and healthy environment for study and work, please take note that previous policy of allowing eating light food and drink in the Library is suspended until further notice. We urge all users’ concerted efforts to keep the place clean.
As mentioned at the beginning of the Updates, the festive season is approaching. Please always make health and safety your top priority and be alerted to possible risks in coming months.
Wish you all a peaceful Christmas and a healthy year of 2021!
College Management