A liberal arts education has for centuries been seen both as the pinnacle of education and the bedrock on which is founded good citizenship and exemplary leadership. In recent times, the liberal arts and the sciences have been seen as being in opposition, with educational institutions, governments, and students feeling forced to choose between them. But in our increasingly data-driven yet interconnected world, we believe that a new conception of the liberal arts is needed, one which blends the quantitative and analytical skills of a scientific education with the qualitative and communicative skills of a traditional liberal arts education. The ideal blend of these skills is to be found in training in applied mathematics.

This research article explores how empathy and reflexivity, the keystones of contemporary pedagogical philosophy, can be taught, learned, and applied through general education (GE) courses with an anthropological approach. General education courses aim to offer students foundational, interdisciplinary, and reflexive knowledge of human cultures and societies. Anthropological theories and methodologies provoke researchers to understand cultural differences from a holistic, comparative, and relativist viewpoint. Drawing on focus group interviews with students of the GE courses at BNU-HKBU United International College, the article argues that an effective and affective way of teaching empathy and reflexivity in general education courses is to raise a sensitive understanding of peoples and cultures at the margin of society and to encourage critical analyses of the historicity and complexity of social issues.

Engineering students often consider complex real-world systems with complex structures and uncertainties. The engineering practices in traditional education systems could only offer limited opportunities for students to understand the concrete properties of the real-world systems, limiting the performance of students. In this action research, simulation-based education (SE) is considered to improve the performance of the students in engineering practices. We introduce virtual simulation platform to help students get familiar with the considered systems; because students could practice with the systems with unlimited trials, they could get sufficient practices in the considered systems and improve their performances when dealing with real-world systems. Feedbacks are collected from questionnaires after the module is completed and the results demonstrate that the introduction of virtual simulation platform helps students get more familiar with the real-world systems and improve their performance compared to previous records.

Group work as a form of cooperative learning has been shown to promote learning in many aspects. However, challenges may arise for group work when members have different expectations and little to no familiarity with each other. This action research was to investigate how well the online peer assessment activities (in the form of Moodle workshops) implemented in two different undergraduate courses would promote individual contribution in a subsequent group project and enhance individual achievements. Online peer assessment activities were introduced in Cohort 2020-21 with the purpose to enhance team collaboration in academically heterogenous groups. The assessment scores of Cohort 2020-21 $(N = 70)$ were compared with those of the previous cohort $(N = 69),$ which had no peer assessment activities, using independent samples t-tests. Additionally, students’ opinions about the online peer assessments were identified from the qualitative comments of the teaching-and-learning evaluations of one course and the focus group discussion of another course. Findings showed that students who had participated in online peer assessment activities were perceived by their peers to have better collaboration in the group work than those who had not. However, no evidence suggested that better team collaboration would associate with higher achievements in the group project, nor would the implementation of online scaffolded peer-assessed activities directly connect to higher academic performance in the individual final assessment. How peer assessment activities could be adjusted using the functions of Moodle workshops to cater for the needs of students are discussed.

Writing a mathematical proof is an essential skill for qualified science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students, especially those majoring in mathematics, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and computer science. However, many first-year students complain that it is tremendously difficult for them to learn mathematics well, particularly mathematics proofs. New teaching staff are also often frustrated during their first couple of years of teaching undergraduates mathematics, wondering why something so seemingly simple is so difficult to teach. Although most universities have experienced this problem, there has been little deep reflection and investigation on why learning of mathematical proofs is so difficult for first-year undergraduates and how to mitigate such difficulties. The aim of this paper is to fill such a gap by reflections and investigation which focus on the recognition and learning of the mathematical proof process.