Students’ interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) tends to decline as they reach high school. Among the factors to which this decline is attributed are the perceptions about the lack of communality and creativity in STEM. To address this problem, we implemented an 8-week STEM-based community service program where high school students learned about STEM and community service. The students were asked to design possible solutions to problems faced by people from disadvantaged groups (e.g., visually impaired people). Using the post-test data from 275 high school students who participated in the program, we examined a model of empathy predicting STEM interest via creative thinking. Results of mediation analysis showed that empathy predicted STEM interest through creative thinking. The findings provided support for the important roles of empathy and creative thinking in the promotion of STEM interest. This information can be used as a basis for designing STEM-based community service programs for the enhancement of students’ interest in learning STEM.

This paper presents our initiative for leveraging SV-IVR (spherical video-based immersive virtual reality) to give Hong Kong ethnic minority students exposure to local Chinese culture via EduVenture VR—an interactive learner-immersed virtual interactive learning application. The work was conducted in the COVID-19 pandemic context; outdoor fieldwork-based learning was not recommended in the circumstance. The research participants were 63 ethnic minority students (from Grade 7 to Grade 9) from a Hong Kong secondary school. The ARCS model of instructional motivation was employed to evaluate the motivational effectiveness of the Chinese culture learning activity supported by EduVenture VR. In the study, we obtained positive results in terms of the 4 motivational dimensions: “Attention,” “Relevance,” “Confidence’ and “Satisfaction.”

This work-in-progress paper discusses an interview-based study in a VR-assisted Chinese language learning program during the COVID-19 outbreak in Hong Kong. Due to the pandemic, an online instructional mode was adopted. We examined teacher and student motivation through the framework of self-determination theory. The results revealed autonomy was fostered in their teaching and learning process. Students perceived they acquired competence in writing with improved learning performance and motivation. Relatedness also existed among the teacher-student interactions. This work is among the first to evaluate how an online VR-assisted Chinese writing curriculum was implemented in a secondary school under the pandemic.

Virtual reality (VR), which is regarded as one of the important educational technologies in recent years, has become more popular to be adopted in teaching and learning contexts in Hong Kong. The present study investigated the changes in teachers’ pedagogical and technological knowledge, attitude and satisfaction after attending a teacher training course on the educational use of VR. Participants were 29 in-service teachers in Hong Kong taking the course. Data were collected from the pre- and post-participation in the course by using four scales: (i ) Pedagogical and Technological Knowledge, (ii) Technological Knowledge, (iii) Positive Attitude towards Harnessing VR, and (iv) Teacher Satisfaction. The results showed good reliability of the scales and significant differences between the pre-test and post-test on using VR in their teaching. Participants had significant improvement in the knowledge of the VR technology and the ICT integration after the training course. They also showed a positive attitude towards harnessing VR in their teaching. Since the factor of content knowledge was not significant in the present study, we will reinforce the teacher training course based on the subject content via school-based development. Thus, the teaching training package will be more comprehensive and suitable for training teachers to adopt VR in practice.

The new 5-year plan of implementing e-learning in Hong Kong has been laid out in the government’s “Report on the Fourth Strategy on Information Technology in Education” in which flipped classroom is one of the important pedagogic approaches being advocated. While many researches were conducted to explore the advantages of flipped classroom, some challenges should not be ignored. This paper discusses the challenges of flipping Hong Kong’s classrooms that include “learning by videos”, “technological and pedagogical concerns” as well as “students’ low learning motivation”. Through understanding these challenges, educators and researchers can develop articulated strategies and models to address the problems, and more importantly, inform the government to provide articulated professional development to schools and teachers in order to perfect the implementation of flipped classroom in Hong Kong.

We have developed EagleEye-a GPS-supported integrated educational system for supporting teachers and students respectively to facilitate and pursue outdoor exploratory learning in Geography fieldtrip activities. We conducted a quantitative study (complemented with qualitative methods) with 98 Geography teachers to evaluate whether our work could provide students with more desirable outdoor exploratory learning experience in comparison with conventional outdoor fieldtrips. Results showed the teachers perceived positively that the EagleEye approach can offer students better student-centred learning experience, enhance their learning motivation, and give them more effective exploratory scaffolds, however, they had reservation about if EagleEye can promote better collaboration among students. The findings provided us with new insights into further studying the implementation of Eagl Eye in real teaching practice.

This article presents the theoretical framework for Dynamic Collective Mobile Gaming (DCMG), an emerging paradigm of educational games enhanced with cloud computing and mobile technologies. Theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings, technological infrastructure, new opportunities and challenges brought by DCMG are also discussed.

EagleEye is an integrated GPS-supported educational system for supporting students and teachers respectively in pursuing and facilitating exploratory learning in outdoor fieldtrip activities. This system has four components, including the (1) Location-based Exploratory Resource Authoring Tool, (2) GPS-supported Exploratory Platform, (3) Repository Server, and (4) Teacher Console. A preliminary study, which involved 40 participants (38 students and 2 teachers from a school) adopting EagleEye in an outdoor fieldtrip activity, was carried out to investigate their perceptions of this system. It was found that EagleEye brought desirable fieldtrip experience to the students. The teachers also perceived positively the educational potential of EagleEye for outdoor fieldtrip activities from both technical and pedagogical perspectives.