Building the capacity of research-informed teaching and learning in the business, communication, and social sciences disciplines: The Hong Kong experience

Conducting authentic research studies with undergraduate students empowers them in both knowledge generation and in taking responsibility for learning. Students’ engagement in research-related activities has increasingly been recognized as an important part of the learning and teaching process. As a result, there is a strong demand for knowledge and skills in the design and implementation of course-based research assignments. We, therefore, developed a one-year project to promote research-information teaching and learning in the business, communication, and social science disciplines. The project is developed as a peer-to-peer learning initiative aiming at strengthening colleagues’ capacity to incorporate research elements into teaching, which would, in turn, facilitate student learning through introducing course-based research activities. We organized four teaching and learning seminars and invited local and overseas speakers to share their experiences in engaging undergraduate students in authentic research. We interviewed faculty members who had experience in implementing research-informed teaching and undergraduate students engaged in research activities and documented their reflections in the form of feature articles and videos. We identified ten journal articles on the practices and evaluation of undergraduate research within and out of the classroom and rewrote them into feature stories. It enables colleagues to gain insight into undergraduate research in various contexts. A designated website was designed to share the learning resources. The website was promoted through various academic associations and conferences. The survey among workshop participants found that colleagues these workshops enlighten them on the innovative pedagogy of research-informed teaching and learning, and demonstrate the process of designing a class assignment or a project with authentic research elements in the social science and business curriculum.