Abstract

The General Education Foundation (GEF) Programme is a common core programme which engages students in reflecting on humanity and nature through the reading of classics. Experiential learning in farming-discussion sessions has been introduced to enrich students’ learning experience and foster their reflection through direct experience and consideration of real-life situations since 2015/16. Much time was spent on explaining basic agriculture knowledge and farming techniques in each session with limited time for in-depth class discussion. Meanwhile, students might have low satisfaction in growing plants because many of them paid inadequate attention to the growing process and subsequence crops withered as a lack of water or nutrients. To address the problem, we are developing the mobile App, Growing Edibles 101 (GE101), to flip the classrooms of experiential learning, facilitate the farming sessions, and strengthen the blended learning in the GEF Programme. This App is designed to help connecting between knowledge, attitudes, and values taught in the GEF Programme with farming practices. It equips students with essential knowledge and basic farming skills by tailor-made videos, and facilitates the selection and planting of crops based on the input of selection criteria. It also issues reminders of daily farming tasks for student groups, and serves as a communication platform among students and between teachers and students. With the help of this App, teaching and learning of the experiential learning sessions in the GEF Programme can be improved.