Participation in discussion on ePortfolio items of other group blogs

Regarding the participation in discussion on ePortfolio items of other group blogs, may I take this chance to thank you for all classmates’ valuable sharings. I am delighted to learn much from each of them. I think this is really a good example of providing learning platform for a learning organization. Due to time constraint, I may not be able to give feedback for each classmate’s sharing in every week. But I would adopt this approach – at least giving one feedback for one classmate’s sharing every week and choosing different group each week.  Below please find the summary of providing feedback to different groups in different weeks:

Feedback comment in discussion of blog message written by OL Group blog members:-

Feedback comment in discussion of blog message written by OL Group blog members:-

I would like to give sincere thanks to my OL Group blog members (Oscar Chan, Alvis Chan, Eric Leung and Maria Wong) writing their blog messages during these eight weeks.  Please find enclosed feedback comments made by me on their blog message contributed from week 1 to week 8.  I would summarize other comments made at other blog members after my sick leave at 10 April 2012.  Hope that we can build up a ePortfolio platform in sharing our teaching and learning experience in our organization.

Week	Group	Group members
Week 8	OL group	Alvis Chan Thanks for your comments in other blogs. I really appreciate the coursemates who devote lots of time in writting their blogs and share their experience. May we build a network blog with our coursemates and Dr Bob Fox that we can share our new knowledge and experience in our future teaching career. Eric Leung Eric, thanks for your comment for MITEChange Blog. I understand the heavy teaching and admin workload faced by our coursemates but I do agree with Leo that more coursemates' contribution will be better in contributing their writing and experience in the blog message. However, their blog coursemates do participate in blog discussion and collaboration in sharing their work in writing the blog. Good job. Oscar Chan Feedback comment:  Thanks for your sharing of your draft planning of individual assignment. The plan is systematic and logical flow in interlinking to what you write in our blog message from week 2 to week 5. As a professional educator, we should share knowledge and teaching experience that benefits our students and us at near future. Let us build up professional teachers' network after taking the course MITE6328 Organizational Learning.
Week 7	OL Group	Oscar Chan It really a problem of the increase of new babies borne by non-local parents. If the government has not adopted suitable measure to stop this issue. There will be a great problem in our local education and medical policy in Hong Kong. Alvis Chan Thanks for your video sharing about the 9-phases for a scenario planning analysis. It is interesting to read your suggesed six possible course of actions to address the scenarios in our college. If more time is allowed, I guess you may spend time to study the course actions and see which area can be improved and revised. Good work in writing your scenario plan. Eric Leung Eric, I agree with the current situation in Hong Kong. Low birth rate of HK kids, high incoming of Mainland Chinese kids from poor class families will make the education system and policy more worse and bankrupt. Creating one "alliance" of primary and secondary schools and colleges will play an important role in future education trend. Staff and students resources can be better distributed at coming futre. We can take Baptist schools, Baptist SCE colleges and Baptist University as good example in illustration. How about Caritas? They have adopted the same strategy as well. Good strategic plan is made by the management.
Week 6	OL Group	Oscar Chan Oscar. Thanks for your view. Innovation is good for adapting change and challenge. However, users are afraid of using new technology and system in their job. They may get use of the old and traditional methods like educators. Education is a more stable job to certain senior and old teachers. They resist to new change and only contempt in their current unchanged situation in their teaching job. As a professional educator, let us move a big step and meet the change as challenges in our life. Alvis Chan Alvis, What an impresed story! With innovative use of technology, you can motivate students more attentive at mass lectures. That shows you have spent much time and paid great effort in preparing your teaching materials. Thanks for your sharing. You shows us a good example of being a professional teacher. Good job.
Week 5	Other blog member OL Group	Chris Chan (Maria Wong feedback comment to Chris Chan from other Blog) Thanks for your suggestion. I will raise out at our finance team meeting and suggest the popular lecturer to read the website link and see if he can improve the over-crowded mass lecture at next semester. Good idea. Oscar Chan Oscar, I agree your college situation really reflect the traditional management culture of top management in schools and colleges. The management and mid-evel administrators have their own ways of thinking and suggested solutions and seldom spend time to discuss the problems concerned and alternative solutions with the frontline users like students and teachers. Two way communication between management and staff should be encouraged. Training and education should be provided to staff for better enhancement of staff learning and professional knowledge in organization. Alvis Chan Alvis, I agree with your observation and hope our management will play a leading role in implementing the change in learning and avoid one-way communication with our staff at college. A good leadership and feedback learning environment is important for good learning organization.
Week 4 Activity (a) Professional development Activity (b) What professional development happens in your workplace	OL Group	Alvis Chan Thanks for your sharing. I understand our current encountering situation. To meet the new change, we need to spend much time and lots of efforts in equipping the New GE subject knowledge and teaching skills in our new academic year. Alvis Chan Action plan I do agree with my member that an action plan should be implemented at different phase stage. An IT coordinator should be appointed by top management and hold meetings with different stakeholders like principals, teachers and representative students for discussion of the plan. After collecting their opinion, the IT coordinator will draw up a plan at different phase stages and invite all stakeholders to participate in the implementation. An independent committee which consists of top management, teachers and administrators should be set up to monitor the action plan being successfully implemented at college or school. Review meeting will be held at regular intervals say once per quarter of a year. Feedback from users will be collected and discussed for further improvement at meeting.
Week 2	OL Group	Eric Leung Eric, thanks for your view in using Kotter's 8-Step Change Model to share the change in I.T. infrastructure at your school. In order to upgrade your school's computers, the above 8 steps are comprehensive and useful for implementation. I agree the following steps are necessary for successful change implemenation. -step 1: Create urgency -step 3: Create a vision for change - step 4:  Communicate the vision - step 7:  Build on the change - step 8: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture
Week 1	OL Group	Eric Leung Eric, thanks for your sharing experience at your workplace. If time is allowed, I suggest a committee will be set up and comprise team members of IT teachers/officials and top management. Review and study on implementation of new IT & system should be practised. Oscar Chan Oscar, thanks for your sharing. It is not easy to change the mindset and traditional learning for old and senior people. However, the top management of your college should take a leading role in motivating staff to accept and adapt the new change of system and policy. It seems that the Senge's five principles are difficult to be practised at your school.

Week 8 – Individual Reviews of Assignment Part I

Week 8 – Individual Reviews of Assignment Part I

TRY Group name : TRY , Reviewee: Marco, Reviewer: Maria by WONG Lai Kuen (Maria) - Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 07:03 PM     1. ePortfolio (group blog) of activities - 4     All activities have been completed by Marco. 2. ePortfolio (group blog) design and navigation - 4    Good design of blog.  Easy navigation. 3. Links to relevant resources - 4     Website links are easily accessed with useful references. 4. Individual student activity – 4     Each group member has contributed their time and effort in writing the blog and give feedback comments. 5. Group collaboration on key tasks - 4     Many interactions in the blog with regular feedback comments from group members.

OL GROUP Group name : OL group, Reviewee: Maria, Reviewer: Marco by LI Kai Chuen (Marco) - Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 06:59 PM 1. ePortfolio (group blog) of activities - 4     All activities have been completed by Maria Wong 2. ePortfolio (group blog) design and navigation - 4    Good design, easy navigation. 3. Links to relevant resources - 4 Good resources of website links and good contribution by group members.  The links are easily accessed with useful information. 4. Individual student activity - 4 All members contribute their time and effort in writing the blog message and give regular feedback comments to individual member. 5. Group collaboration on key tasks - 4 Many blog sharing message and feedback comment interactions between group members and received quite a lot of feedback comments from other blogs’ members.

Week 8 - Individual Reviews of Assignment Part I

Week 8 - Comment on Leo (MITECHANGE)

ePortfolio of Activities (4)

Leo has posted every week, with a good quality and quantity. Discussions were made and external resources, such as videos were provided.

ePortfolio Design and Navigation (4)

Links were added, so that we can easily filter out the posts by individuals.

Links to Relevant Resources (3)

There were some links and videos in the posts, but they cannot be easily found. A more systemical way in presenting the details will be more appreciated.

Individual Student Activity (2)

Leo has commented on some of the post. However, More contributions to other groups could be better

Group Collaboration on Key Tasks (3)

Discussion and collabration in the group can be found in the group blog.

Planning of Assessment Part 2: Individual Task

Design an organizational development plan to encourage Cross-KLA (Key Learning Area) subject collaboration and Learning with IT.

Background Information

My school is a Band 2 Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) Secondary School in Hong Kong Island. My school has 65 years history; the age of the teachers in my school is a little bit high. Most of the students come from mid-class family, about 1/3 of them are come from mainland China.

Using IT in assisting administration is popularizing, but the adoption of IT in pedagogy is in the beginning.

1.      Analysis of my school situation

Senge’s five principles (Week 1) are used to analysis the culture of my school.

Diffusion of Innovations Model (Week 2) is also used to analysis the acceptance level of IT adoption. It affects the amount of effort we must give in promote them on innovation.

2.      Development plan design

Changing Model (Week 2)

To design the development plan that can be executed in my school. A suitable model of change is chosen based on the analysis above. Catalytic Integration Model is chosen due to the culture is still not well-established in my school. The principal act as a key agent can enhance the outcome.

Changing Mindset (Week 3)

Due to the change of pedagogy involve change of the teaching habit of all teachers, especially autonomy is emphasize in teaching work, changing mindset of teachers is extreme important for the succession of the plan. Activities like seminars, site visit of pioneer and carry out experiments in our school is needed. And the target is about 40% of the teachers agree the innovation. The skill of storytelling (Week 6) is required in this stage.

3. Organizational Readiness (Week 4)

Besides incentives of the teachers, vision, skills, resources, action plan and collegiality are also important for an organization to change. Self-assessment is requires to check which parts above must be improved for readiness to change.

4. Changing Organization into a Learning Organization (Week 5)

To keep the change substantial and continuously improvable, my school is needed to change to a Learning Organization. The LO Survey provided by OLKC is a good tools to analyze and overcome the shortcomings of my school.

After the adequately preparation, organizational development plan will be successes.

Week 7 – Scenario Planning

Develop ideas of where I could incorporate the use of scenario planning in my

organization.

According to Scenario planning is a method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our world. It is a group process which encourages knowledge exchange and development of mutual deeper understanding of central issues important to the future of your business. (Martin Börjessm, 2007)

We share and envision scenarios in our working organization.  The ability to envision and anticipate different future possibilities seems to be a key capability for managing uncertainty.  Uncertainty refers to a state that we have limited knowledge and it is impossible to exactly describe the existing state or a future outcome.

As our organization is a community college of a local university, we face the challenge of our college’ marketing plan and students intake at 2012.  

The 2012 double cohort year presents an admission challenge for our organization with two cohorts of about HKALE 31,000 candidates and about 71,000 HKDSE candidates.  The HKSAR government has recently launched an E-application platform for current year secondary students to submit applications between February and May 2012 to meet the challenge event.  Our organization is one of the major supporters of this service and top management do expect the stage of a further new building being completed in August.  I would like to share my ideas developed regarding the scenario planning steps as follows:

Scenario planning steps

1.        Identify focal issue

Our college has to face the uncertainty of our new academic building ready to be used at coming semester A of 2012.  Does our college have enough space and facilities to accommodate for the new intake and old intake CCCU students at current year 2012. Our marketing campaign and admission arrangements will be adjusted to tie in with this development.

2.  Search for driving forces &  3. Find uncertainties

The four driving forces are stated as follows:

n   Political forces

n   Demographic forces

n   Cultural forces

n   Technological forces

I would like to select three drivers out of four that are both important and the most uncertain in our case:

(1)  Political forces

Due to the successful case of Shue Yan college being recognized as private university status by government, more new private universities will be set up in new coming years.  The new elected Chief Executive may have his own idea about the education policy.  It will lead to a change of education policy on sub-degree and degree programmes.

(2)     Demographic forces

Due to the open door policy adopted by HK government, many mainland Chinese would like to stay in Hong Kong for further study and job finding.  They may be interested to take the associate degree or higher diploma programs to upgrade their academic qualification.

(3)       Cultural Forces

Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong students may have variance in their cultural problems like language, learning style, living style and point of view.

(4)       Technological forces

Web-based learning or e-learning programs will be popular and common at sub-degree and degree programs.  This will attract more students either new and old cohort students to enroll those programs.

4. Formulate scenario logic

l   Demand of enough venue spaces for two cohorts students;

l   Demand of teaching and facilities resources;

l   Demand of extra places for associate degree and degree programs.

5.  Strategic analysis

(a)  Review last year’s results.

(b)  Update the teaching and administrative staff on our latest efforts in reinforcing our college brand. 

(c)  The flow of admission process will be discussed at the staff briefing.
(d)  Discuss the added features in the college’s computer system.

(e)  Checking of applicants’ English language qualifications and other academic qualifications. 

Our top management does plan and expect the new academic building to be ready for use at coming new semester in September.  However, they do have alternative plan to rent other colleges’ buildings for the temporary use of lectures or tutorial rooms for the new and old intake students.