100 / / 101 Enhancing the RC Experiential Learning course and RC requirements: Starting from academic year 2020/2021, the 1-credit compulsory Community and Peer Education course - RC Experiential Learning has a new set of intended learning outcomes. Reintegrated and working in conjunction with other RC requirements such as RC activities, the new course helps first-year students adapt to university learning and college life. It guides students to build their own employment-oriented e-portfolios. By means of building a career-oriented e-portfolio, students learn to plan for their four years of university life and keep records of their reflections on major events that they participated in. The e-portfolio will document milestones of students’ personal growth, highlight their character and personal qualities, improve their professional competitiveness and serve as a tool for their life-long career planning. Another 1-credit compulsory Community and Peer Education course - RC Community Team Project will also be introduced. From the cohort of 2021, all new students are required to fulfil this RC requirement by the end of their second year. This course requires students to promote specified positive values or messages in the community through a creative community service team project. Through active learning and experiential learning, they have the chance to collaborate using their expertise and the knowledge acquired in their different academic majors to explore those values and messages thoroughly. It also enables them to deepen their understanding of the society, build community networks, practise teamwork and elevate their professional competitiveness within and outside the Greater Bay Area. The project scope centres around one of the following eight values, which are preliminarily set as follows: love for one’s home country, law-abidance, integrity and honesty, social responsibility, interpersonal relations, service to others, cultural preservation and positive attitude. These values are reviewed every year and subject to revision when needed. Three topic areas will be set under each value, making a total of 24 topic areas which are also subject to adjustment, addition and deletion annually. Each student team selects one topic area and determines a specific topic therein that carries important positive messages. They then work collectively to deliver the messages to the target audience of their choice such as primary and secondary school students, elderly people, the community or associations using the most effective electronic means, thus promoting positive social values of the community. This intended outcome reflects the purpose of this community service project and is also the specific focus of the task of the student teams. Finally, each team is required to give an oral presentation documenting the whole process, and reflection on personal feelings. The report can be included as an entry in students’ e-portfolios. Strengthening pastoral care and positive values education: Each RC student must be assigned at least one RC academic staff member as mentor throughout thei r universi ty years. Individual meetings will be held on a regular basis to develop mutual trust and person-to-person communication upon which emotional care and cultivation of moral and civic values can be delivered. Each student leader is required to take care of one group of RC students providing peer support in addition to that provided by the academic staff. Under this new direction, academic staff, administrative staff and student leaders of the RCs need to go through basic training in counselling and mediation. In addition, part-time counsellors are assigned weekly to each RC by the Student Counselling Section so as to provide professional counselling to those students in need. 憭㝕⛿㶇䑑剹ꯗ2.0曭 UM Residential College Education 2.0 睙┩ꌄ | PART III RC as a multi-disciplinary platform for knowledge integration and application, embodying the ideal of whole-person development in the 4-in-1 education model: The two enhanced compulsory courses, RC Experient ial Learning and RC Communi ty Team Project, train students to creatively apply knowledge acquired from academic majors and general education in the real-life, multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary environment of the RCs. They will learn how to communicate and work with students from different majors and backgrounds and how to achieve synergy through teamwork. This inclusive learning mindset will permeate through every aspect of their RC life. In terms of RC organisation, as early as in the fall of 2017, the university reviewed the management structure and financial model of the RC system and made systematic enhancements including the following: (1) Reinforcing the university’s oversight of the RC system’s governance structure which, while promoting diversity in respective characteristics and spirits of each RC, ensures the smooth operation of the RC system as an organic whole with an integrated accountability framework that reflects diversity; (2) Strengthening the university’s management of the RCs’ financial matters, improving cost effectiveness and ensuring effective monitoring and accountability of the use of publ ic funds; (3) Deepening the connection between the RCs and the Faculties, setting up three compulsory Community and Peer Education courses with a total of three credits, and redefining the roles and duties of academic staff of Faculties serving as fellows or affiliates in the RCs, thereby expanding the non-resident fellowship; (4) Streamlining the arrangement of administrative staff to improve efficiency. The systematic enhancements were introduced in January 2018. Starting from 2021, RC academic staff have gradually become official members of Faculties and Departments with various degrees of involvement in teaching and research, although their main duties remain the delivering of education in RC programmes and activities.
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