Search

The project presented in this paper aims to formulate a recommendation framework that consolidates the higher education students' particulars such as their academic background, current study and student activity records, their attended higher education institution's expectations of graduate attributes and self-assessment of their own generic competencies. The gap between the higher education students' generic competence development and their current statuses such as their academic performance and their student activity involvement was incorporated into the framework to come up with a recommendation for the student activities that lead to their generic competence development. For the formulation of the recommendation framework, the data mining tool Orange with some programming in Python and machine learning models was applied on 14,556 students' activity and academic records in the case higher education institution to find out three major types of patterns between the students' participation of the student activities and (1) their academic performance change, (2) their programmes of studies, and (3) their English results in the public examination. These findings are also discussed in this paper.

English as a foreign language (EFL) students' use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that generate human-like text may enhance students' written work. However, the extent to which students use AI-generated text to complete a written composition and how AI-generated text influences the overall writing quality remain uncertain. 23 Hong Kong secondary school students wrote stories with AI-writing tools, integrating their own words and AI-generated text into the stories. We analyzed the basic structure, organization, and syntactic complexity of each story and its AI-generated text. Experts scored the quality of each story's content, language, and organization. By employing multiple linear regression and cluster analyses, we found that both the number of human words and the number of AI-generated words significantly contributed to writing scores. Furthermore, students could be classified into competent and less competent writers based on the variations of students' usage of AI-generated text compared to their peers. Cluster analyses revealed some benefit of AI-generated text in improving the scores of both high-scoring students' and low-scoring students' writing. We suggest differentiated, pedagogical strategies for EFL students to effectively use AI-writing tools and AI-generated text to complete writing tasks.

A co-curricular learning programme, entitled the U-STEMist Scheme, was conducted in a joint university effort to provide STEM undergraduates and pre-service teachers with experience in designing service-based STEM projects. This scheme attempted to link STEM with humanity, which has been undervalued in tertiary STEM education. Students in different majors from four different universities in Hong Kong collaborated to solve real-world problems as a form of community service. From the self-evaluation and feedback of the U-STEMists on the scheme, we found that the scheme was able to develop their basic STEM competencies from setting goals and designing solutions through overcoming various challenges to producing both tangible and intangible products. The U-STEMists valued the experiential learning process, namely, the opportunity to collaborate and learn from their peers with complementary expertise while serving the community. The evaluation outcomes emphasise the benefits of experiential service learning with an emphasis on humanity to tertiary STEM education as a supplement to more narrowly based disciplinary studies. Nevertheless, the outcomes point to the challenges for implementing similar schemes in the future, including strengthening the triadic interrelationship of the U-STEMists, mentors and community partners, better preparation of the U-STEMists for the project and focussing on team building to enhance collaboration among members.

Purpose: The problem of plastic wastes is serious nowadays worldwide, although plastic wastes recycling is already in practice. To promote sustainability in plastic waste recycling, the quality of wastes collected should be maintained well, resulted from a good recycling practice. This paper aims to study a new plastic recycling bin (PRB) and poster interventions on the enhancement of university hall residential students' proenvironmental knowledge, attitudes and intended behaviours (KAB) and actual recycling behaviours; informative and feedback posters were used as interventions. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted a quasi-experimental setting to examine the effects of the new PRB on students' KAB and actual behaviours in recycling, whereas the quality of the recycled plastic was measured according to the extent of cleanliness (CLE), separation (SEP), compression (COM) and sortedness (SOR). Findings: Results showed that significant positive enhancements in KAB only happened with the use of blended interventions, which included promotion through the PRB and posters, suggesting that the use of the PRB and posters was useful in achieving better recycling behaviour. Originality/value: Blended intervention study by using new design plastic recycling bin and poster on the effect of students' proenvironmental and recycling KAB.

Background: While Western academia has increasingly recognized the importance of studying existential anxiety among adolescents, psychometrically valid and reliable tools for measuring this construct remain unavailable in Chinese societies. Objective: This research investigated the empirical viability of the construct of existential anxiety in Chinese adolescents. Specifically, it examined if a similar factor structure and set of theoretical associations existed as found in previous western samples and provided initial psychometric data on the Chinese version of the Existential Anxiety Questionnaire (C-EAQ). Methods: A sample of 1205 Hong Kong Chinese high school students was recruited to complete a questionnaire comprising items of the C-EAQ and several validation measures. Results: An exploratory factor analysis on 621 randomly selected participants of the sample yielded a new threefold factor structure with 12 items. A confirmatory factor analysis on the remaining 584 participants demonstrated an acceptable model fit. These factors revealed three separate but related constructs of existential anxiety, namely, anxiety about the meaning of life and death, anxiety about condemnation and guilt, and non-acceptance of anxiety about the meaning of life and death. The construct validity of C-EAQ was supported by significant correlations with measures of fear of death, internal locus of control, presence of meaning, life satisfaction, and self-esteem. Conclusion: As the results suggest possible different interpretations of existential anxiety in Chinese culture, further studies should be undertaken to examine what constitutes the content areas or personal themes that generate existential anxiety among Chinese adolescents. Implications can also be drawn for youth work practice.

Response to the death of a spouse was examined by focusing on acceptance, which was conceptualized as both a process and an outcome. Grounded theory was applied to analyze the experience of 15 bereaved Hong Kong Chinese older adults. The main theme that emerged was time. Acceptance of spousal death was found to be related to the search for meaning in 2 time-related themes: timing of spousal death and paradoxical time perception. For paradoxical time perception, 2 subthemes were identified: truncation and daily isolation in time. For bereaved older adults, time-related meaning seeking may be best fostered by self-transcendence, (e.g., participation in volunteer work and social activities). (Contains 1 table.)