Search results

In Hong Kong, the application of information technology (IT) in both the public and private sectors is essential to maintaining Hong Kong’s position as one of the world’s leading financial and commercial centres. IT or IS (information systems) professionals working in the IT industry, with technical know‐how and business acumen, are key elements to the success of most IT projects. A major concern is that there are not enough of these IS professionals to cope with the growing demand. The Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Information Systems (BAIS) was implemented at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) to meet this shortfall. The programme aims to produce a new breed of IS people who are experts in areas of IT and IS; those who realize the importance of business functions and understand how to fit IT and IS into a business, helping it to gain strategic advantages over its competitors. Looks at IS professional requirements in Hong Kong, and presents an introduction and an initial report on the BAIS programme currently being offered at CityU.

To describe the introduction of a collaborative, user‐initiated, unmediated, interlibrary loan service for returnables between initially three and then all eight universities in Hong Kong.

Historical narrative combined with user and staff evaluation.

The introduction of the service has been a great success.

This article describes in detail the introduction of a service that will be of interest and relevance to many other libraries facing declining budgets and the need to share resources in an efficient and effective way.

The purpose of this paper is to exhibit the integration of learning and study strategies inventory (LASSI) with the City University of Hong Kong information systems to promote teaching and learning within the university.

From the 2006 entry cohort, all undergraduate freshmen at City University of Hong Kong are required to complete LASSI online through Administrative Information Management System (AIMS). Each student is required to take LASSI at three specific times during their undergraduate careers. With the cooperation of H&H publishing, City University has developed a program within AIMS to upload LASSI results of individual students so that the students can view their scores whenever they wish to. In addition to helping the students develop their learning and study strategies, the integration between LASSI and the university's information system provides academic staff with aggregated LASSI scores for their students.

The integration of LASSI with the university's information systems is found to be useful as students have the possibility of reviewing their progress in terms of learning and study strategies while teachers can design appropriate teaching and learning activities according to the relative strengths and weaknesses in learning of their own classes to assist students. In addition, the input of LASSI data to the City University AIMS helps administrative personnel correlate LASSI results with the other detailed information available in the AIMS.

This paper provides other institutions with insights into the integration of LASSI with the university's information systems to enhance the teaching and learning environment within the university. It aims to inform decision makers of issues in centralizing and accessing students' data to improve teaching and learning.

This paper aims to apply the inventory – Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) to examine the development of teamwork skills among freshmen from the Chinese Mainland through a cooperative learning activity (group project) in the context of Hong Kong.

The questionnaire survey was conducted twice, at the beginning (pre) and end (post) of the group project; qualitative interviews were undertaken after their project completion.

It was found that, except for Category 5 (having relevant knowledge, skills and abilities), the post mean scores in all items of other four categories declined, because students’ Chinese Mainland backgrounds led to their different understanding toward teamwork, as unveiled by the qualitative interviews. However their project completion enabled them to acquire the relevant competencies, causing the rise in the mean scores of Category 5.

Limited by the small sample size and American-driven CATME, this study did not observe the significant improvements in students’ self-reported evaluation of teamwork. There should be more applications of this instrument into the Asian and Chinese contexts for having it adapted to different national and cultural situations.

As a gap observed in Chinese Mainland students’ understanding to teamwork, overseas education institutions can incorporate this for curriculum development.

As a pioneer work in applying the CATME in the Chinese Mainland situation, this study implied a significant room for such kind of inventories mainly originated from west to incorporate the diverse national and cultural characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to compare students' and faculty members' perceptions of academic integrity; their understanding of experiences pertaining to different aspects of academic misconduct (e.g. plagiarism); and to examine the underlying reasons behind academic integrity violations in a Hong Kong context.

A mixed methods approach comprising quantitative and qualitative methodologies was used. First, a quantitative survey was conducted with students and faculty. Results from the survey were used to generate interview questions for an interview‐based qualitative study, which consisted of individual interviews for faculty members and focus group interview for students.

Results from both the survey and interviews showed that faculty members and students do not share a consensus on the definition of the seriousness of plagiarism and collusion. Students, in general, commit misconduct due to academic work, pressure for grades, and teachers' unclear instructions of academic integrity. Faculty members rarely report cases of misconduct to the university and handle the cases according to their own standard.

The topic of academic integrity has received increased attention in the past decade from college and university teachers and administrators around the world. Plagiarism is amongst the most widely studied acts of dishonesty in the area of academic behavior in universities world‐wide. Not many studies have investigated other acts of academic dishonesty and teachers' perception of academic integrity, especially in the Chinese context. The findings from this study provide useful insights for educators to implement academic honesty education programs, especially within the Chinese context, and especially in Hong Kong. The results also provide the foundations in developing an online academic integrity tutorial for the sampled institution.

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of four cross-institutional teaching enhancement projects (TEPs), a relatively new form of professional collaboration. The focus is on the impact at departmental, institutional and cross-institutional levels because such impact is the main reason for establishing cross-institutional TEPs.

A professional capital framework guided the examination of decisional and social capitals at departmental, institutional and cross-institutional levels. A theory-of-change method was adopted to collect data from 35 sets of documents, 22 project members and 65 stakeholders.

The authors found five forms of impact, showing the development of decisional and social capitals mostly at institutional and cross-institutional levels, whilst signaling the relatively weak impact at departmental levels. Therefore, the values of cross-institutional TEPs have not been fully realized and future endeavors need to better utilize the capitals in programs.

Few studies evaluated the impact of large-scale, cross-institutional TEPs. The authors offered new contributions by gauging the impact of these under-explored forms of complex professional collaborations.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the quality improvement project to increase the medical record documentation completion rate in a district hospital in Rwanda. Despite the importance of medical records to support high quality and efficient care, incomplete documentation is common in many hospitals.

The pre- and post-intervention record completion rate in the maternity unit was assessed. Intervention included assigned nurse to specific patients, developed guideline, provided trainings and supervisions.

The documentation completion rate significantly increased from 25 per cent pre-intervention to 67 per cent post-intervention, p < 0.001. The completeness of seven out of the ten elements of medical records also significantly increased.

The quality improvement project created a cost-effective intervention that successfully improved the documentation completion rate. Ongoing monitoring should be continued to learn sustainability.

The results are useful for hospitals with similar settings to improve completion of nursing documentation and increase nursing accountability on patient care.

Improving healthcare quality has become a worldwide effort. Strategic problem solving (SPS) is one approach to improve quality in healthcare settings. This case study aims to illustrate the process of applying the SPS approach in implementing a quality improvement project in a referral hospital.

A project team was formed to reduce the hospital-acquired infection (HAI) rate in the neonatology unit. A new injection policy was implemented according to the root cause identified.

The HAI rate decreased from 6.4 per cent pre-intervention to 4.2 per cent post-intervention. The compliance of performing the aseptic injection technique significantly improved by 60 per cent.

This case study illustrated the detailed application of the SPS approach in establishing a quality improvement project to address HAI and injection technique compliance, cost-effectively. Other departments or hospitals can apply the same approach to improve quality of care.

This study helps inform other hospitals in similar settings, the steps to create a quality improvement project using the SPS approach.

Hospitals are responsible for protecting the well-being of their patients and staff. To do so, accurate information is needed for the hospital to make appropriate decisions and allocate resources efficiently. This study aims to describe the implementation process of a surveillance system to reduce hospital-acquired infection (HAI) reporting errors in the maternity unit of a district hospital in Rwanda.

The team adapted an evidence-based tool to identify and report HAI, provided training to staff and distributed reporting responsibilities equally between the maternity staff to improve accuracy in HAI reporting.

The intervention successfully reduced the reporting discrepancy of HAI from 6.5 to 1.9 per cent: p < 0.05.

This case study described the implementation process of a surveillance system using strategic problem solving to reduce HAI reporting errors. The results can inform hospitals in similar settings of the steps to follow to implement a cost-neutral HAI surveillance system to reduce reporting errors. The accurate data will enable the hospital to take corrective measures to address HAI in the future.

The results will inform hospitals in similar settings of steps to follow to implement a cost-neutral HAI surveillance system using the SPS approach to reduce reporting errors.

The purpose of this study is to improve the hand hygiene compliance in a hospital in Rwanda. Hand hygiene is a fundamental routine practice that can greatly reduce risk of hospital-acquired infections; however, hand hygiene compliance in the hospital was low.

A multiple-strategy intervention was implemented with a focus on ensuring stable water supply was available through installing mobile hand hygiene facilities.

The intervention significantly increased the overall hand hygiene compliance rate by 35 per cent. The compliance for all of the five hand hygiene moments and all professions also significantly increased.

By implementing an intervention that involved multiple strategies to address the root causes of the problem, this quality improvement project successfully created an enabling environment to increase hand hygiene compliance. The hospital should encourage using the strategic problem-solving method to conduct more quality improvement projects in other departments.

Findings from this study may be useful for hospitals in similar settings seeking to improve hand hygiene compliance.