School of Science and Technology 科技學院
Computing Programmes 電腦學系
| Programme | Bachelor of Science with Honours in Computing |
| Supervisor | Dr. Andrew Lui and Dr. Vanessa Ng |
| Areas | E-learning Systems |
| Year of Completion | 2011 |
This project is aimed to develop a new online learning platform called GoPutonghua for self-learners to learn Putonghua. This platform includes online lectures and e-books. The platform allows learners to conduct online exercises that are related to the lecture contents. An online assessment system is developed for learners to know their performance to seek for improvement. A character dictionary (zidian) and a phrase dictionary (cidian) are built to support mapping from Chinese characters to Pinyin. Learning tools like Pinyin Converter and Text-To-Pinyin Speech have been developed to search for the Pinyin (with tone marks) of Chinese characters and produce the correct pronunciations in Putonghua. The two types of communication tools (asynchronous and synchronous) are also included in the platform. GoPutonghua is developed to provide more free resources and services for self-learners to learn Putonghua in a hassle-free manner.
The project objectives are described in detail in the following:
Allow learners to conduct online exercises.
A background investigation is carried out to review some of the current Putonghua online learning systems on phonics including “Pu Le Wang” and “e-Putonghua”. The former is developed by the Chinese University of Hong Kong for local university students. The latter is developed by KanHan Technologies Limited for working people.
This part focuses on the comparison of the two existing platforms and the new one – “GoPutonghua Online Self-Learning Platform”. It can be seen that “Pu Le Wang” and “e-Putonghua” both have learning materials covering the major topics to deliver the knowledge to the learners. They include exercises and online assessment that are related to the topics to enhance learners' self-knowledge.
Learning tools can be treated as assistant tools to help learners learn Putonghua in a better way. “e-Putonghua” has provided various learning tools such as TTS and Pinyin dictionary. The Pinyin dictionary however only allows learners to search for the Pinyin with tone marks. It does not produce pronunciations. This may affect the learning effectiveness. Another platform “Pu Le Wang” even does not provide these tools.
The comparison and evaluation on the chosen online learning systems is shown in detail below:
Concerned with the architecture of the new Putonghua platform, the online assessment and learning tools are the major components of the platform. There are totally four learning tools including character dictionary, phrase dictionary, Pinyin Converter and Text-To-Pinyin Speech. The communications tools like Windows Live Messenger and forum will also be included in the platform.
The techniques used in the platform include HTML, CSS, MySQL and PHP. HTML is used to create web pages and add multimedia elements such as audio, images to the web documents. CSS is used together with DIV tags to describe the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in HTML. MySQL is used to build a database system to store the questions, score, user information, etc. PHP is used to create dynamic web pages and support the MySQL database.
The architecture of the Learning Platform is shown in the following:
A set of learning tools in form of Character Dictionary (zidian), Phrase Dictionary (cidian), Pinyin Converter, and Text-To-Pinyin Speech are developed. The details will be discussed in the following section.
Character dictionary is one of the learning tools that allows users to look up the Mandarin Pinyin of a single Chinese character together with its corresponding phrase. This function needs two dictionary database tables to support which are zidian and cidain. They store traditional Chinese, tone number and tone marks. The following uses an example to illustrate the implementation of character dictionary:
A user enters a character “爸' in the text box, the system will take this input to search the “zidian” table. Once the row that has the traditional character “爸” is found, the data in this row will be fetched. The data retrieved includes the traditional character “爸”, tone number “ba4” and tone mark “bà”. Then it will use the traditional character and the tone number to search the corresponding phrase in “cidian” table.
To allow user to listen to the pronunciation of Putonghua, the tone number will be used to find out the correct audio file from the specified sound folder. The file address of the audio file will be sent to the Flash MP3 player. Finally, the system will display the result as shown in the following:
Phrase dictionary is a learning tool provided for users to search for the Pinyin of a phrase. This tool needs one database only — cidian. The user can enter the phrase they want to look up. For example, the phrase “學習” is entered in the text box. The system will pass it to “cidian” table to search for the Pinyin. If the row containing the phrase “學習” is found, the data in that row will be retrieved. The traditional Chinese “學習” , the tone number “xue2 xi2” and the tone mark “xué xí” are the retrieved data.
The tone number will also be used to find out its corresponding MP3 audio file from the sound folder named “ciyu” and pass the file address to the Flash MP3 player. Finally, the user can see the Pinyin of the phrase and can listen to the pronunciation. The implementation of the phrase dictionary is shown as below:
Pinyin converter is another learning tool that allows users to convert the Pinyin with tone numbers into Pinyin with tone marks. No database is used for this function as the combinations of tone numbers and tone marks can be stored in two different arrays respectively. For example, when the user enters the input “an1”, the system will find whether the occurrence of “an1” is in the array which store the tone number. If it is found, “an1” will be replaced by the corresponding tone marks (?n) in another array and finally output the result.
The implementation of the Pinyin Converter is shown as below:
Text-To-Pinyin Speech is the most important learning tool. This tool is designed for users to search for the Pinyin of a sentence, a paragraph and allows users to listen to the correct Putonghua pronunciation. The two databases (cidian and zidian) mentioned before will be used.
Suppose a user enters a sentence in the text area. The system will first split the sentence into array elements. After splitting, it needs to check whether the elements in the array are Chinese characters or not. If the element is a single Chinese character, the system will go through the “zidian” table to search the Pinyin with tone mark of that character and output the Pinyin with tone mark and the character.
If two or more elements are phrases after combination, the system will search another table called “cidian”. After that, it will use the tone number of character /phrase to find the corresponding audio mp3 file. When all the addresses of audio files are collected, they will be sent to the Flash MP3 player. The player will play the pronunciation of the whole content. Below illustrates the implementation of the Text-To-Pinyin Speech.
The online assessment system includes a question generation system to generate the 5-type questions including multiple choice, true or false, listening, translation and fill in the blanks. Each question is generated without duplication. Two databases are involved in the system. One is question database that is designed to store the question ID, questions and solutions. Another type is marks database which stores the score of users for different tests.
Users can freely choose to ask any type of questions. When users submit the test, the system will check the answers and calculate the marks through question database. The marks will then be stored in the marks database. The system will finally display the results to the user which includes the number of correct answers and the score.
The implementation of the OAS is shown in the following:
The administration system is a system provided for cyber teachers to manage the platform in an easier way without requiring technical knowledge of any web programming languages. The system supports adding, editing, deleting, searching for the online assessment questions, online exercise questions and user information.
Additionally, setting the number of questions is also available for both the online exercises and online assessment. For the online assessment, it supports an advanced function that is time limit setting. Teachers can set the appropriate time limit for each test based on the number of questions they had already set.
The following figure shows the functions of the administration system.
The following flowchart illustrates about the process of managing the platform. In the admin page, teachers can add, edit, delete, and search the information. The process starts from input username and password, it will check with the user database that it is valid or not. If username and password are valid then they can access to Admin Home Page and go to the next step but if they are invalid then they need re-input username and password again. After login, teachers can select which information that they want to manage.
There are totally three types of information: online exercise questions, online assessment tests and user records. Teachers can choose to add, edit, delete and search the related information. Some operations may involve uploading of files (image/audio). For example, creating a listening question requires teachers to upload an audio file to the server. The flowchart of the administration platform is shown below:
Questionnaires were designed to obtain views and opinions of the GoPutonghua Online Self-Learning Platform. The aim was to identify any areas that could be improved or changed in order to provide better services and resources to the self-learners. Respondents were also asked to rate various components of the platform based on two criteria: usefulness and quality.
The total number of people invited to evaluate the platform and fill in the questionnaires was 14, of which the majority of respondents were university students (57.14%), 14.29% were Putonghua teachers, 28.57% were working people. The sample of the questionnaire and the category of respondents are shown in the following:
| Very Low=1 | Low=2 | Medium=3 | High=4 | Very High=5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learning Materials | |||||
| Lecture Notes | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 50% (7) | 35.71% (5) |
| e-Book | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 7.14% (1) | 64.29% (9) | 28.57% (4) |
| Online Exercise | |||||
| Exercises | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 57.14% (8) | 28.57% (4) |
| Learning Tools | |||||
| Character & Phrase Dictionary | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 7.14% (1) | 35.71% (5) | 57.14% (8) |
| Pinyin Converter | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 28.57% (4) | 21.43% (3) | 35.71% (5) |
| Text-To-Pinyin Speech | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 42.86% (6) | 57.14% (8) |
| Online Assessment | |||||
| Multiple Choice | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 50% (7) | 35.71% (5) |
| True or False | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 42.86% (6) | 42.86% (6) |
| Listening | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 35.71% (5) | 50% (7) |
| Translation | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 21.43% (3) | 35.71% (5) | 42.86% (6) |
| Fill in the blanks | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 57.14% (8) | 28.57% (4) |
| Communication Tools | |||||
| Windows Live Messenger | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 35.71% (5) | 50% (7) |
| Forum | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 7.14% (1) | 57.14% (8) | 35.71% (5) |
| Very Low=1 | Low=2 | Medium=3 | High=4 | Very High=5 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Learning Materials | |||||
| Lecture Notes | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 21.43% (3) | 57.14% (8) | 21.43% (3) |
| e-Book | 0% (0) | 7.14% (1) | 7.14% (1) | 50% (7) | 35.71% (5) |
| Online Exercise | |||||
| Exercises | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 28.57% (4) | 50% (7) | 21.43% (3) |
| Learning Tools | |||||
| Character & Phrase Dictionary | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 14.29% (2) | 78.57% (11) | 7.14% (1) |
| Pinyin Converter | 0% (0) | 7.14% (1) | 57.14% (8) | 21.43% (3) | 14.29% (2) |
| Text-To-Pinyin Speech | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 42.86% (6) | 42.86% (6) | 14.29% (2) |
| Online Assessment | |||||
| Multiple Choice | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 35.71% (5) | 42.86% (6) | 21.43% (3) |
| True or False | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 50% (7) | 35.71% (5) | 14.29% (2) |
| Listening | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 35.71% (5) | 35.71% (5) | 28.57% (4) |
| Translation | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 35.71% (5) | 50% (7) | 14.29% (2) |
| Fill in the blanks | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 42.86% (6) | 35.71% (5) | 21.43% (3) |
| Communication Tools | |||||
| Windows Live Messenger | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 42.86% (6) | 28.57% (4) | 28.57% (4) |
| Forum | 0% (0) | 0% (0) | 28.57% (4) | 42.86% (6) | 28.57% (4) |
“GoPutonghua” contains components like learning materials, online exercises, online assessment, learning tools and communications tools. As compared to the existing online Putonghua platforms, “GoPutonghua” includes more comprehensive functions which address the needs of learners. It also provides a flexible learning environment that allows self-learners to learn at anytime, at any place and at their own pace.
The online exercise and online assessment system (OAS) has been developed. The OAS supports generation of questions, automatic marking of tests. It has included 5 types of questions: multiple choice, true or false, listening, translation and fill in the blanks. The first two types of questions can test the analytical skills of learners. The listening questions can test their listening skills. The last two types have been constructed to enhance the knowledge of Pinyin. There is a ranking board provided which allows learners to know their performance and seek for improvement. The online exercises are included by using the already built questions (multiple choice and true or false) from the online assessment. The different practices provide an opportunity for learners to test and enhance their knowledge.
Based on the evaluation results, future development is planned. For the learning materials, the e-book will insert the sound. Each chapter in e-book will have word pronunciation so as to make users learn in a more effective way. Apart from the e-books, it is planned to develop a system to retrieve different categories of news (financial, entertainment, current affairs, etc) every day from the Internet and produce the pronunciations and show the Pinyin in order to attract users to learn Putonghua through daily news. The online assessment system is planned to include speaking test. It will build a sound recorder which can support pause, replay functions, etc. The provision of speaking test is to improve the speaking skills of learners.
Copyright Wong Fu Hong, Andrew Lui and Vanessa Ng 2011
S. C. Ng, Andrew Kwok-Fai Lui and F H Wong, “GoPutonghua: An Online Learning Platform for Self-learners to Learn Putonghua”, in R. Kwan, et al (Eds), Enhancing Learning through Technology: Education Unplugged: Mobile Technologies and Web 2.0, Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) vol. 177, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011, pp. 96-108. ISSN: 1865-0929.
Jonathan handles all external affairs include business development, patents write up and public relations. He is frequently interviewed by media and is considered a pioneer in 3D printing products.
After graduating from OUHK, Krutz obtained an M.Sc. in Engineering Management from CityU. He is now completing his second master degree, M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering, at CUHK. Krutz has a wide range of working experience. He has been with Siemens, VTech, and PCCW.
Hugo Leung Wai-yin, who graduated from his four-year programme in 2015, won the Best Paper Award for his ‘intelligent pill-dispenser’ design at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering’s International Conference on Consumer Electronics – China 2015.
The pill-dispenser alerts patients via sound and LED flashes to pre-set dosage and time intervals. Unlike units currently on the market, Hugo’s design connects to any mobile phone globally. In explaining how it works, he said: ‘There are three layers in the portable pillbox. The lowest level is a controller with various devices which can be connected to mobile phones in remote locations. Patients are alerted by a sound alarm and flashes. Should they fail to follow their prescribed regime, data can be sent via SMS to relatives and friends for follow up.’ The pill-dispenser has four medicine slots, plus a back-up with a LED alert, topped by a 500ml water bottle. It took Hugo three months of research and coding to complete his design, but he feels it was worth all his time and effort.
Hugo’s public examination results were disappointing and he was at a loss about his future before enrolling at the OUHK, which he now realizes was a major turning point in his life. He is grateful for the OUHK’s learning environment, its industry links and the positive guidance and encouragement from his teachers. The University is now exploring the commercial potential of his design with a pharmaceutical company. He hopes that this will benefit the elderly and chronically ill, as well as the society at large.
Soon after completing his studies, Hugo joined an automation technology company as an assistant engineer. He is responsible for the design and development of automation devices. The target is to minimize human labor and increase the quality of products. He is developing products which are used in various sections, including healthcare, manufacturing and consumer electronics.
| Course Code | Title | Credits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| COMP S321F | Advanced Database and Data Warehousing | 5 | |
| COMP S333F | Advanced Programming and AI Algorithms | 5 | |
| COMP S351F | Software Project Management | 5 | |
| COMP S362F | Concurrent and Network Programming | 5 | |
| COMP S363F | Distributed Systems and Parallel Computing | 5 | |
| COMP S382F | Data Mining and Analytics | 5 | |
| COMP S390F | Creative Programming for Games | 5 | |
| COMP S492F | Machine Learning | 5 | |
| ELEC S305F | Computer Networking | 5 | |
| ELEC S348F | IOT Security | 5 | |
| ELEC S371F | Digital Forensics | 5 | |
| ELEC S431F | Blockchain Technologies | 5 | |
| ELEC S425F | Computer and Network Security | 5 |
| Course Code | Title | Credits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ELEC S201F | Basic Electronics | 5 | |
| IT S290F | Human Computer Interaction & User Experience Design | 5 | |
| STAT S251F | Statistical Data Analysis | 5 |
| Course Code | Title | Credits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| COMPS333F | Advanced Programming and AI Algorithms | 5 | |
| COMPS362F | Concurrent and Network Programming | 5 | |
| COMPS363F | Distributed Systems and Parallel Computing | 5 | |
| COMPS380F | Web Applications: Design and Development | 5 | |
| COMPS381F | Server-side Technologies and Cloud Computing | 5 | |
| COMPS382F | Data Mining and Analytics | 5 | |
| COMPS390F | Creative Programming for Games | 5 | |
| COMPS413F | Application Design and Development for Mobile Devices | 5 | |
| COMPS492F | Machine Learning | 5 | |
| ELECS305F | Computer Networking | 5 | |
| ELECS363F | Advanced Computer Design | 5 | |
| ELECS425F | Computer and Network Security | 5 |
