ABSTRACT
The liberal education that community colleges deliver traditionally depends on the concept of a dynamic learning community, featuring liberal teacher-student interactions and a pedagogic environment, learner-centered formative assessment, effective student services for strategic university articulation, and dynamic student activities and engagement (Tang & Dang, 2019). In the case of Hong Kong, a small community college campus serves as a hub of the geographic location where the aforementioned activities take place in real time. However, it is unprecedented that COVID-19 made Hong Kong’s community colleges close their campuses and moved teaching, learning, and assessment completely online. This chapter engages in the case study of Hong Kong’s community colleges in view of how it mitigated COVID-19 through emergency remote teaching (ERT) for online learning and organizational adaptation. It especially examines the unique contextual conditions and dynamics of Hong Kong community colleges in experiencing the processes of ERT and sustained the delivery of liberal education. This research is grounded by the use of qualitative interviews conducted with college lecturers and students. The article delves into empirical analysis about the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the everyday practices of teaching and learning. More importantly, the chapter will make sense of the needs, problems, assets, opportunities of lecturers, and students encountered during times of ERT for online learning. It will also examine the implications for a possible paradigm shift of liberal education in light of synergizing online and face-to-face teaching.
