The Computing Programme Team was established as part of the Mathematics Programme team in 1989. At the HKMU, a programme team is equivalent to an academic department in other universities. The Computing Team is one of the five current programme teams of the School of Science and Technology, led by the Dean of School Professor Philips Wang (王富利教授). It was also one of the first programme teams established.
The first computing programme launched was the Bachelor of Science with Honuors in Applied Computing programme back in 1989. Since then, the programme team have gradually developed into a mature academic unit with more than 400 fulltime students and 500 part-time students, and with programmes at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The team has also established solid foundation in research and development, especially in educational technology, innovative pedagogy, evolutionary computing, and software engineering.
HKMU is renowned for distance-learning education but she has evolved into a multi-mode university with a very strong full-time teaching operation. In fact, the full-time equivalent (FTE) of full-time students already exceeded part-time students in 2013.
The Computing Team was the first department in the school to offer a full-time programme back in 2004 when she developed the Bachelor of Computing with Honours in Internet Technology programme (BCOMPHITF). The programme was well received by secondary school-leavers as well as Associate Degree and Higher Diplomas holders. In 2007, the Bachelor of Science with Honours in Computing (JUPAS 9707) was also one of the first seven JUPAS programmes offered by the OUHK.
Due to the increased demand of Higher Diploma and Associate Degree holder for articulating to a degree programme, the Computing Team started offering the Bachelor of Science with Honours in Web Technologies programme (BSCHWTF), in collaboration with the Caritas Institute of Higher Education, in 2011. The programme has since produced over 140 graduates equipped with practical knowledge in web technologies for the local IT industry.
In 2012, the re-structured Bachelor of Computing with Honours in Internet Technology (BCOMPHITJ) was launched for the New Secondary School curriculum students. A new JUPAS code 9717 is adopted to distinguish this new programme from the previous one. There are now over 320 students studying in this programme.
The Master of Science in Information Technology with Internet Application (MSCITIA) is the flagship postgraduate programme offered by the Computing Team. Since 2000, the number of graduates from this programme has already exceeded 750. The programme equips students with practical knowledge and it is welcome by those who like the flexibility of distance learning. Due to its popularity and uniqueness, the programme received the ICT Bronze Award Professional Development category in 2012.
In 2011, The Computing programme team entered a collaboration agreement with IBM China/HK Limited in offering the Postgraduate Certificate in Enterprise Computing, an advanced and specialized training course for mainframe and enterprise computing.
The Computing team is highly dedicated to quality teaching for the benefits of our students. In addition to research in computing topics, innovative teaching and learning has been the team’s another forte because it can inform best practices in effective education.
Back in 2003, the Research Grants Council (RGC), after a vigorous assessment process based on the same criteria as applied to other CERG research proposals, recommended to the Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) to grant $312,000 to Dr. Vanessa Ng and Dr. Steven Choy’s proposal titled ‘Improving teaching and learning of computer programming in an asynchronous distance education environment’. Recently, Dr. Vanessa Ng and Dr. Andrew Lui was part of a cross-institution team receiving $4.4 million from the Quality Enhancement Support Scheme (QESS) on developing an e-learning platform for secondary school leavers. For other recognitions of the academic staff, please refer to the Recognitions and Awards page.
The Computing team are proud of our graduates. Down the years, our students have been competitive and won many prizes and awards. The most notable is perhaps a team of Year 1, 2, and 3 students were the second runner-up in the ACMHK Collegiate Programming Contest 2013, bettered nearly thirty teams from other universities some of which were formed with postgraduate students. For details of other prizes won, please refer to the Student Achievements page.
