Following the success of the Teachers’ Development Day held in March, CityU welcomed another group of local secondary school teachers on 18 May 2021 for the same event to share with them various fields of knowledge and the University’s latest updates. The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) supported the University’s initiative again by offering an insightful sharing session, but unlike the one in March that focused on social sciences, the theme for the recent event fell more on the humanities side.
In the opening remarks, Dean of CLASS Professor Richard M WALKER extended a warm welcome to the teachers and explained briefly what humanities and social sciences are. He also mentioned how faculty members here have been embracing new technology in conducting interdisciplinary research.
He then handed over the session to Dr TSUI Lik-hang, Assistant Professor at the Department of Chinese and History and an expert in digital humanities. From the transition of STEM education to STEAM education, he first elaborated on the importance of arts education to society. Then, he went through the pre-history of digital humanities and described how historians use information technology tools to carry out research studies. He cited the China Biographical Database (CBDB), a project in which he has involved for a long time, as an example. CBDB is a database containing information of over 470,000 individuals in Chinese history. Apart from looking up the biographies of individual historical figures, users can also retrieve information about the social networks between groups of people and the social structure in a particular time or place in Chinese history from CBDB. Several examples were given to illustrate how the use of the database helps expand the scope of investigations, redefine previous conceptions and generate new ideas.
The speaker shared a snapshot of digital humanities during the 45-minute session and it was well-received by the teachers. The participants found the talk inspiring and that opened up new dimension to study humanities. For the teachers’ further exploration into the topic, Dr Tsui suggested several websites with a wealth of information on this emerging field.
Prior to the parallel sessions hosted by CLASS and other CityU’s colleges and schools, the University also arranged programmes to present its strategies in nurturing talents who can play leadership roles to overcome challenges in this rapidly-changing world. It is hoped that the half-day event would bring teachers new knowledge, perspective, and insights.
