The planning committee consisted of representatives from all the UGC-subvented organizations, the Chair on this occasion being provided by HKU which also provided the secretariat. The committee held eight meetings.

It devolved tasks where possible to the participating institutions to promote a sense of "ownership", and to enable the planning committee and its secretariat to concentrate on overall central coordination, design and policy.

After a number of site visits, the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine was chosen as the venue. External professional services were used only for printing, exhibition set-up, and rapportage. Design-work, including textual and graphic materials, was done in-house.

The short lead-time for the conference presented a number of problems. In particular, there was no time to have more than one call for papers, or to organize several rounds. So participants were chosen on the basis of abstracts (but in some cases full texts) after the call for papers. This was done through a flyer (in electronic and hard-copy form), through e-mail, and through a Web site. Most of the organizational work was done electronically.

The selection was done by having each submission reviewed independently by two committee members. Noone reviewed submissions from his or her own institution. The committee considered the results, and, broadly, accepted all the submissions with two "Y"s and some with a "Y" and a "?".

An iterative process was used to assign contributions to parallel sessions grouped under themes. This had to be done in a short time, and could not be perfect. But it gave rise to very few complaints.

A 120 page published book of abstracts was produced (in less than two weeks) in time for the conference (ISBN 962-86230-2-8).

In addition to the parallel sessions, plenary sessions were held, addressed by two visiting scholars from the U.S.A. and by speakers from several Hong Kong institutions. The final morning's sessions of brainstorming (including a student group) were fed back to a plenary meeting for comments by the visiting speakers, and general discussion.

There were nearly four hundred listed participants, and a further 30 to 40 invited guests attending the opening session. Estimated attendance by head on each day was approximately 280, 270, and 120. The conference Web site has been visited more than 3000 times.

An eighth and final meeting of the planning committee was held after the conference to review feedback and consider recommendations for further action or for the future.

Only about 5% of listed participants replied to an e-mailed request for feedback. It is hard to draw conclusions from such a limited response, especially since the respondents had rather varied comments (conflicting in only a few matters). Nevertheless, the planning committee was aware that overall the programme was congested. It adopted the approach of asking members of each panel to consult each other in advance (with access, generally, to the full text of all papers), and to determine for themselves the best format for each session. It recommended that each panel consider the "round-table" approach for crowded sessions. Panels also were asked to choose their own chair for the session. Some (but not all) panel members were in favour of this approach by the committee. However, the programme seems to have remained too crowded from the point of view of audiences as well as contributors. It seems that the panels found it hard to turn the possible handicap of a rich menu into a benefit, and that most, if not all, kept the format of individual short presentations.

Generally, however, the arrangements for the conference were well-received, and found fruitful by many participants.

It was noted that the HKU PVC (Academic) had already written to the UGC Secretary-General with comments on the conference. It was agreed that the Chairman of the planning committee should supply a fuller report, including an account of the views expressed in the sessions on the concluding day of the conference, especially where these might have policy implications.

The conference planning committee re-formed itself into the Conference Proceedings Committee, and is currently engaged in a process of blind multiple review of the full and final texts of 59 contributions. After considerable discussion the committee concluded by unanimous vote that the mode of publication which would have most impact for raising interest in the issues, and spreading good practice, would be to publish the majority of contributions electronically after a process of review of the full-texts (and revision where necessary), and to publish in hard form a volume of selected papers (after a rigorous process of selection taking into account not only the quality and importance of contributions, but also the balance and utility of the volume). It envisages appointing a small editorial committee for this purpose.

Consideration will need to be given to the relation between the Conference Proceedings and the proposed Web site. If the latter proposal goes ahead, its purpose will in some respects overlap that of the electronic proceedings (assuming that they are on-line). One possibility would be that the Proceedings would be a distinguishable component of the TLD site.

I found it very worthwhile to have taken on the task of Chairman, and wish to thank all my colleagues on the planning committee, the secretariat, and the staff of the CAUT at HKU for their devoted and effective collaboration and hard work. Thanks are also due to the Consultative Committee on TLQPR for its enlightened support. I believe that it would be good to continue these conferences, which can have a good role in helping to improve the learning environment for our students.

• At a plenary session, keynote addresses were given on Promoting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Universities in Hong Kong, and Building a Peer Community to support the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
• Five parallel panels held discussions with other participants of questions previously identified by the planning committee, and reported back to a reconvened plenary.
• a student panel identified the question of student motivation as a key issue. This could be enhanced by giving students a stronger role in determining the goals of study, or at least making them clearer. It was also important to encourage and give a proper role to students' own self-evaluation. The panel recommended more forums for peer discussion, a shift towards seminar-style learning environments and away from traditional didactic methods. It would like to see more physical space for informal discussion areas. It commented that funding cuts had reduced the number of courses available, and recommended more flexibility in course-selection to increase student motivation. Students wanted a stronger partnership with their teachers, and more individual and immediate feedback. This would make it less likely for lower- achieving students to be discouraged in circumstances where large classes tended to cause teachers to treat students as a homogeneous group.
• The other panels paid particular attention to the notion of the "scholarship of teaching and learning" (SoTL). Some were sceptical about the term, or thought that despite good intentions, in practice reflection about pedagogy with appropriate investigation would not be counted as "scholarship" unless it resulted in publications. Others feared that an institutionalization of SoTL might lead to undue pressure to produce output, and distort teaching in the way, they thought, that research had already been distorted. Some voices opposed the Carnegie principle that teaching should be made more "public", and wanted the relation between teacher and taught to remain an essentially private matter.
• Maryellen Weimer then spoke. She reported empirical findings that the relation between teaching and research was neutral: in other words, over the spectrum, research neither reinforced nor detracted from teaching (except in so far as time used for one might reduce time used for the other). She also commented that learning is beyond the teacher's control, being entirely the responsibility of students. The importance of SoTL was the actual processes of thought and discussion which would go into seeing whether and how it can be defined.
• Daniel Bernstein, who was one of the first Carnegie scholars, said that often the nominal mission of an institution did not match the operative situation with regard to commitment to the teaching function. The result was typically a vacuum where what we need is mature evidence to make decisions about tenure etc. He advocated "going public" with one's teaching in order to secure such evidence.
• Many points were made in more general discussion. A trenchant student comment was: "The student feedback is common sense. We need to have three things working together here, student initiative, teacher motivation, and policies that motivate the teachers".
• Some contributors complained about funding cuts, and expressed the view from the ground that the UGC and senior management in the institutions were paying only lip-service to the importance of teaching. One contributor said that the application of a business model to the funding of education in Hong Kong was misguided and would kill academic excellence.
• In summary, there was wide agreement about the centrality of teaching, and widespread anxiety that continuing funding cuts were certain to make it much harder to achieve various identifiable and shared goals in this area.