Although the OUHK has branched out into providing face to face full-time associate degree and Project Yi Jin programmes in recent years, distance learning programmes at tertiary level have remained the core of its course offerings. Espousing the tenet of 'Education for All', the University has kept its door open to Hong Kong residents aged 17 and above, regardless of their previous academic qualifications, with the exception of some professional and postgraduate programmes.

In the October 2002 semester, a total of 25,143 students were enrolled in nearly 200 distance learning courses in a wide range of academic disciplines including arts, social sciences, science, technology, business, education and languages. Over 95 per cent of these students were working full-time, and about 60 per cent of them were over 30 years old. They were spread throughout the territory and came from very diverse career and educational backgrounds. In addition, the OUHK started offering some degree programmes in collaboration with local partner institutions in Mainland China in 1997, and last year about 3,000 students in 22 cities benefited from such study opportunities.
 
 

Flexible mode of study
The teaching and learning of such widely dispersed heterogeneous groups of students is made possible through a flexible mode which employs a credit accumulation system and a combination of media. OUHK students initially enrol on individual courses and progress according to their individual plans and pace until sufficient number of credits are accumulated for graduation. The multiple exit options allow students to gain awards at different levels. Students usually take an average of six years to graduate with an undergraduate qualification. In 2002, about 50 students graduated with a certificate award, 230 a diploma, 80 a higher diploma or an associate degree, 2,300 an undergraduate degree, and 2,000 a Master's degree or other postgraduate qualifications. Of these, 945 were students from the Mainland.

  
The OUHK has been providing free educational television programmes to its students and the public.
 
 

Instead of traditional classroom teaching, OUHK students on each course are provided with a comprehensive self-study package and allocated a part-time tutor who runs tutorials, provides counselling and marks written assignments. Students can also join optional tutorial meetings held on weekday evenings or during weekends in many venues, or seek advice and help from tutors who are experienced teachers or professionals by telephone or online. Students who are frequent travellers can apply to take their examinations outside Hong Kong. A total of 26 such examinations were arranged in Mainland China and overseas venues in Canada, Singapore and the US last year.

Multimedia learning and support
While the bulk of OUHK's learning material is print-based, television is also used to supplement teaching. The University has been providing free educational television programmes on course-related topics and skills for distance learning to students and the public at large. The number of programmes broadcast has continued to increase, from 380 in 2001/02 to 432 in 2002/03. They are being aired on the local television station TVB's Pearl channel every Sunday morning. During the year, 11 new programmes were produced in-house, and two new series, on Applied Mathematics and business management in China, were purchased for broadcast.
 
 
Mr Michael Tien (centre), Chairman of the clothing chain G2000 and the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, was the guest speaker at one of the 'Talking to CEOs' Forums.  
 
 
A joint project 'Talking to CEOs' with Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) was initiated in July 2002, in which renowned CEOs were invited to share their work experiences and management philosophies with university students at open forums. While RTHK recorded the forums for its own radio broadcasts, the University produced documentaries using footage from the forums and other materials for broadcast on Pearl and its homepage. These documentaries also served as useful reference materials for business students at the University. Altogether 14 forums were organized up to December 2002 and about 30 to 100 OUHK students took part in each forum. As a spin-off of the programme, the OUHK Press published a book which documented the forum discussions in writing for public sale.
 
 
(From left) Mr Christopher Cheng, OBE, JP, Steward of the Hong Kong Jockey Club, Mr Philip Chok, JP, Deputy Secretary for Education and Manpower, Mr Daniel S C Koo, OBE, Chairman of Shui Hing (HK) Ltd and Mr Seaman Kwok, Vice Chairman of Lam Kin Chung Morning Sun Charity Fund, officiate at the 2000-2002 Information Technology Development Plan Acknowledgment Ceremony.
   
 

Through the $98 million Information Technology Development Plan launched in 2000, online learning support has been added to about 200 courses, equivalent to over half of the total number of courses. Almost 3,000 interactive online activities have been introduced in over 50 Chinese courses. The University's Online Learning Environment (OLE) allows students to access course information and multimedia learning materials, interact with fellow students, tutors and course coordinators, submit assignments and get feedback from tutors electronically. There were 73 English OLE and 32 Chinese OLE courses for the October 2002 semester.

Twenty-five video and five audio programmes in VCD and CD formats were produced for courses in education, business, health and language. Five new CD-ROMs were produced to accompany the University's courses, and 11 were in the process of development.

Embedded in these media are animations, demonstrations, images, reference resources and interactive activities which provide vicarious experiences and illustrate the dynamic aspects of learning.
 
 

Electronic Library
The OUHK Electronic Library, a rich 24-hour learning and reference resource for students, has become more popular. The average monthly access to its electronic materials including books, journals, past examination papers and recommended readings was about 509,000 hits last year. The Library's electronic-text centre now houses more than 10,000 titles of digitized English and Chinese books (equivalent to about four million pages) allowing full text search. A two-year project on re-categorizing e-resources for improving search precision was started. A digital archive of the University's publications and an IT Literacy Collection for learners of different skill levels were established.

Students may also visit the University Library on the campus, which has acquired a physical collection of over 100,000 printed volumes and 1,400 serials. Samples of the University's course materials have been placed in the campus library and many Hong Kong public libraries for public reference. Facilities in the Library's Language Laboratory were upgraded to support more multimedia applications.
 
 
More and more multimedia learning materials have been developed by the OUHK in recent years.
 
 
Internet services
During the year it became possible for students and new applicants to enrol on courses, pay tuition fees and apply for interest-free tuition loans in one stop via the University's portal. The admission system was enhanced to facilitate enrolment online, by mail or in person in eight – instead of four previously – months of the year for courses in the University's two semesters. New online services for students to apply for graduation, amend personal particulars and enquire about credit transfer and financial assistance were introduced. Online tools for prospective students to get advice on which programmes would match their interests and abilities as well as on how to construct their study plans also came into use. Online enquiry of student data by tutors for communication and administrative purposes and submission of examination marks by scriptmarkers through the Tutor Portal also became possible.
 
 
Support for OUHK students has been enhanced after a number of online services became available through the University's webpage.
 

IT literacy and administrative support
In order to help students, staff and tutors make better use of IT resources available at the OUHK, the University has introduced more training to raise their IT literacy. Apart from workshops on basic IT skills and the OLE, the University also offered a free online course Information Literacy and the Internet to new applicants for the April 2003 semester to provide them with skills to search for information online.

Advanced IT facilities, including broadband lines for Internet access and current models of computers, were set up at the University's new Mainland China office in SEG Plaza in Shenzhen. The personal computers in the laboratories of the main campus at Ho Man Tin were reconfigured and upgraded with more advanced software to meet the requirements of some courses.
 
 

Financial assistance
The OUHK has always understood that costs can deter people from studying and may undermine the University's openness. Therefore, since 1993 the University has set up various financial support schemes, and about half of the University's students benefit from such assistance each semester now.

The $5 billion Continuing Education Fund, launched by the Government in June 2002, has provided needy students at the OUHK with one more form of financial assistance, in addition to the existing low interest loans, bursaries, non-means tested loans, interest-free tuition loans and Employer Support Study Scheme fee discounts. For the October 2002 semester, 33 OUHK distance learning courses were on the list of the Fund's reimbursable courses; and applications from over 1,700 OUHK students involving over $13 million in tuition fees were approved. Nearly 90 courses from the Li Ka Shing Institute of Professional and Continuing Education were also approved by the Fund.
 
 
About 1,000 visitors took part in the Information Day event held on Ho Man Tin campus on 1 and 2 March 2003. The occasion aimed to help prospective students understand more about the OUHK's programmes and student support services.
 
 

A total of $15.3 million in the form of bursaries or loans was disbursed to 1,155 students under the University's Student Financial Assistance Scheme during the year. A new half bursary grant, which covers half of the tuition fees to be paid, has been made available to students from the October 2002 semester. Besides, five students who encountered unforeseen financial difficulties obtained a total of over $46,000 from the newly introduced Emergency Grant sponsored by the Croucher Foundation.

The Government's Non-means Tested Loan Scheme offered loans totalling $18.6 million to 1,220 students. The Wing Hang Bank interest-free tuition loan scheme, which allows repayment in ten monthly instalments, granted $165.3 million in loans to 14,459 students. It was decided that an additional option of repayment in six monthly instalments would be provided starting from the April 2003 semester.

About 40 donors, from a wide spectrum of corporations and organizations in Hong Kong, offered scholarships and prizes to the University's most accomplished students. More than 110 scholarships and prizes totalling $970,000 were awarded to students.
 
 

Information and counselling services
About 70 admission information sessions and two information days were arranged for prospective students. Eighteen roving exhibitions were held in various MTR stations to let the public know more about the University's mode of learning. In addition, the University took part in a number of external exhibitions, such as the Education and Careers Expo and the Civil Service Training and Development Institute's E-Learning Expo. A new information booklet Studying with The Open University of Hong Kong together with a CD-ROM was produced to provide handy reference.

Support for student activities and career development
Despite heavy family and work commitments, some OUHK students and graduates have devoted time and effort to organizing a wide variety of extra-curricular activities including academic seminars, study tours, rowing competitions and football matches. Since the former OUHK Students' Union ceased operation in 1998, the University has provided financial support directly to individual student societies.

During the year ten student societies and the Alumni Association were given funding and support through the University's Committee on Student Affairs (CSA), which maintained close contact with them. An education fund to finance OUHK students to attend conferences and study tours outside Hong Kong was set up with a donation of $2 million from Celestial Asia Securities Holdings Limited. Beneficiaries of the sponsorship included 29 full-time Associate of Business Administration students and 16 distance learning China Studies students who visited Jinan University in Guangzhou and Tsinghua University in Beijing respectively.

  

(Top) The Dragon Boat Team has obtained a number of awards in open competitions.

(Bottom) The MBA Association Graduation and Christmas Dinner for 2002 graduates.

 
 
 
Sixteen students joined the China Studies tour to Beijing in March 2003 organized by the School of Arts and Social Sciences and sponsored by the CASH Education Fund set up by Celestial Asia Securities Holdings Limited.
 
 

A Preparatory Committee formed by student volunteers and representatives of the student societies has been working towards the goal of re-establishing the Students' Union, including the drafting of a constitution. The CSA has provided the Committee with the necessary assistance. During the year the Committee proposed a model of operation for the Union and discussed its feasibility with the University's senior management. It planned to hold some forums to collect views from students. In addition, the Committee organized activities such as orientation and used books sale for students.

The Student Affairs Office and individual Schools held talks, workshops and exhibitions on topics relating to personal and career development for students and graduates. Over 1,500 students attended three series of talks organized by the Office on study skills, career opportunities and facing pressure at work. Useful websites on career development and job vacancies are linked to the University's homepage for students' easy access. Over 70 companies advertised about 500 job vacancies on the site during the year.
 
 
Twenty-nine full-time Associate of Business Administration students took part in a study tour to Guangzhou in December 2002 and met with students of Jinan University.
 

Services for students with disabilities and prison inmates
The OUHK's inclusive education has endeavoured to accommodate the needs of different types of students, including those with disabilities and serving their terms in prison.

Among the students who took courses in the October 2002 semester, 116 informed the University about their disabilities. The University has made available a range of services – including dedicated bursaries, counselling services, loan of learning equipment, free Internet access, and special arrangements for assignments, tutorials and examinations – to facilitate their learning. They can also make use of special learning tools at the University's Disabled Student Centre.

Sixty-six inmates in local prisons were also studying with the University in the same semester, and a total of 190 inmates have studied at the OUHK over the years. Support services for them include library access by representatives, dedicated bursaries and special examination arrangements.
 
 
 
2002-2003 OUHK Annual report