Experiential Learning at UST: Mistakes, Lessons, More Mistakes…That’s Experiential

“ ... I noticed a pattern in the way all of our team members worked that makes me smile when thinking about the future. That pattern stems from failure. There were many ... many things that went wrong unexpectedly but over and over again what we did was fix the problem and work harder ...” Commented by a student from the winning team in IELM2100E - an Experiential Course on Automation Technology.

In Spring 2015 and Spring 2016, a regular and required course on Automation (IELM2100S) had been restructured and offered as an experiential course (IELM21900E). Similar to other traditional courses, students have lectures, labs and exam in IELM2100S. For the students attending IELM2100E: no required lectures and labs, just self-paced lectures (videotaped), tutorials and project (a real industrial problem). There is no pre-requisite and anyone who is motivated can take the course. What makes this offering interesting is both IELM2100S and IELM2100E are offered at the same time and students have a free choice: Exam or no exam? Experiential or no experiential is the question.

In this seminar, Prof So shared the success and the failure as well as learnt in how to balance between too much hand-holding and too little. In particular, issues involved in the design of E-course, how to facilitate the learning experience, how to assess and grade the learning journey … has been shared and discussed. E-course students were also invited to share their learning experience with the participants.

Prof. Richard So received his BSc degree in Electronic Engineering and PhD degree in Sound and Vibration (Human Factors) from University of Southampton, England. He started his research into Virtual Reality (VR) when he worked for the ‘Super Cockpit Program’ from the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, USA. Prof. So joined the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology as an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and later Professor of Industrial Engineering and Professor of Bio-medical Engineering. His research interests focus on human spatial vision and binaural spatial hearing. He is a Fellow of the International Ergonomics Association, a Chartered Fellow of the Royal Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors and a Fellow of the Hong Kong Chartered Institute of Engineers. He is currently serving as the co-Editor-in-Chief of Displays, Editor of Ergonomics and Scientific Editor of Applied Ergonomics. He is serving on the drafting committee of ISO International Workshop Agreement IWA3 on Image Safety and Commission Internationale de L'eclairage (CIE) Technical Committee TC1-67 and expert panel for ISO working group on dynamic image safety. Prof. So has over 100 referred publications, 2 patents and one Technology Start-up. He is also a pioneer in Experiential Learning & Design Thinking.