IT Services

Classroom AV/IT Facilities

PolyU has over 100 lecture theatres and general teaching rooms. While all are equipped with essential audio-visual equipment and network connections, the AV/IT facilities in each room may be slightly different to serve different teaching purposes. When searching for a classroom, users may wish to check the facilities first before making a reservation. With the “AV/IT Teaching Facilities Search” website, users can check out the full list of AV/IT equipment together with the floor plan and photo(s) of the selected room without physically visiting it. A 360-degree preview of the environment is also available for some teaching venues via the website.

Online Learning Platforms

The University has adopted a Learning Management System (LMS) named Blackboard which internally known as LEARN@PolyU (理學網) as the common online leaning platform. LEARN@PolyU allows teaching staff and course administrators to create and manage interactive online learning content. A full range of IT supports on course content development and integration, server administration and account management are provided to teaching staff and course administrators for the operation of LEARN@PolyU.   Conduct Online Teaching with Blackboard Collaborate/ MS Teams To cope with the increasing demand in conducting online teaching sessions, teaching staff can leverage Blackboard Collaborate to conduct online lectures and interact with students using features such as video and/or audio chat, whiteboard, file and application sharing, breakout group, text chat, interactive polling, etc. Alternatively, Microsoft Teams, available in Office 365, can also be used by lecturers to conduct online teaching activities. MS Teams provides chat-based workspace for teachers and students to hold discussions, share documents and screens, etc. Zoom has been integrated and enabled for use in both Blackboard Collaborate and MS Teams to conduct synchronous online teaching delivery.   Using Video Content Management System for Online Teaching and Learning Staff and students can leverage Video Content Management System (also called VCMS/ uRewind/ Panopto) for online teaching and learning activities. VCMS enables lecture capture, video streaming, live broadcast and lab recording in support of flipped classroom, distance learning, virtual classroom, MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), etc. Teaching staff can capture their lectures for online review by students at any time using any device. For details, please visit the following user guide and video tutorial.

PolyU GenAI

The PolyU generative AI application is solely for PolyU staff and students to use for teaching and learning, research, and work-related activities only. Gen AI tools cover ChatGPT models including image-to-text service and Stable Diffusion text-to-image service running on public Cloud. Alibaba Tongyi Qianwen, Mistral AI Mixtral and Meta Llama open-source model hosted on campus are also available. Access requires successful authentication using your staff or student NetID.

Student Computer Centre

The Student Computer Centre (SCC) is located on the 4th floor of the Li Ka Shing Tower where over 200 PCs are accommodated for student and staff use. Apart from the computer labs, there are informal learning spaces for project discussion and group work and a relaxation area for users to take rest and relax. No prior booking arrangement is necessary in SCC. All users are requested to observe the Rules for Student Computer Centre Users (see the rules via the link below). Computers & Software Students are welcome to leverage the prevailing software installed in SCC for their study. For details of the computer hardware and software configuration in the Student Computer Centre, please refer to the list via the link below. TLIT Lab Teaching and Learning Information Technology (TLIT) lab, located at M401, provides workstations with graphics card installed to run multimedia applications. Software such as Unreal Engine for Augmented Reality (AR) / Virtual Reality (VR), gamification, level design and development; Renderforest for animation, DaVinci Resolve for video editing and Unity for game development are available for use in TLIT lab and/or via remote access. Virtual Access Computer Centre Software applications in SCC and TLIT lab are also made available through Virtual Student Computer Centre (vSCC) for students to remote access from home machine browser with their NetID and NetPassword. Classroom Booking for Teaching A number of designated PC rooms on the 4th floor of the SCC is available for class booking by departments via the Room Enquiry and Booking System on a first-come-first-served basis. Please contact your Departmental Timetabling Officer for booking arrangements. Printing & Scanning Printing and scanning services are provided in the SCC and octopus card is adopted for charging. A wireless printing service “SCC Mobile Print” via mobile application “Print Utility” has also been introduced. Users can easily print files from their mobile device or cloud storage at the SCC's printer such as Microsoft OneDrive for Business, Adobe Reader, Google Drive, Google Docs, iCloud Files and Dropbox, etc. For details, please refer to the SCC mobile print user guides.

Teaching & Learning Information Technology

Teaching & Learning Information Technology (TLIT) embraces technology to enhance the learning experience for students. All across the globe, education institutions are adopting gamification and Mixed Reality (MR) technologies in learning and teaching. These technologies create new horizon for next generation education and empower learners’ creativity as well as storytelling and collaboration skills. To equip our students with new knowledge to meet the challenges of the 21st century, a series of workshops will be organised regularly in each semester to cover areas as to creation of animated content, development of virtual reality /augmented reality applications and online games, etc. Recordings of the previous workshops are available online for revisit if students are not able to attend the class. Schedule of upcoming workshops will be posted on TLIT website, interested students are recommended to check it out and register for the workshop. TLIT Lab To support students in producing multimedia footages, pictures and apps for their assignments and projects, a Teaching & Learning Information Technology (TLIT) Laboratory providing 23 computers with high-end graphics cards has been set up in the M401 of Student Computer Centre (SCC). The multimedia applications installed on the computers including Unreal Engine for Augmented Reality (AR) / Virtual Reality (VR), gamification and level design and development; Renderforest for animation, DaVinci Resolve for video editing and Unity for game development. Students who want to leverage TLIT applications can either physically visit the lab or access remotely over internet via vSCC (click here for details to vSCC set up).