The underlying philosophy of our scheme is: Students learn best by doing, not listening. The scheme involved a group of talent students to carry out research with our Physics faculty members. The project courses involved include the one offered to final year students (PHYS 398: 4 credits) and those offered to all years of UG physics students (PHYS 191/291/391: one credit).
Our scheme aims at:

To develop a learning culture by involving students in further development of the discoveries and inventions recently developed in the department of Physics;

To encourage student-led experimental research to develop students' independent and critical thinking, and various technical skills;

To utilize research outcome from this scheme for enriching undergraduate experimental physics courses and promoting science to general public.

Undergraduate Education
This novel approach has achieved many objectives of an all-round university education through equipping students with core skills and knowledge in up-to-date science development, searching, discovering, integrating and organizing knowledge, problem solving, oral and written presentation, experimental design & fabrication,  team working and communicating their ideas, which are transferable into post-university experience.

Demo/teaching Kits
Since the scheme started in Oct 2005, a wide range of topics has been offered to participated students, including UV Science, lithography based on laser holography, sonic band-gap structures, nano science & technology, Leaky Bucket Simulation of Multi-Service Mobile Network and ER Fluid, etc. This approach has resulted in six software- and five hardware-demo/teaching kits. So far, one teaching kit (sonic bandgap experiment) has been developed into an experimental setup with an integrated lab manual, which has been added as a new topic in the course PHYS311 (Advanced Experimental Physics) since the summer semester of 2007.

Outreach Activities
Some of the research outcome of this scheme has been used in promoting science either through offering mini-lecture series in a number of local secondary schools, or through HKUST Outreach Day (2006 and 2007) and in-campus lab visits by local/overseas secondary school students. In particular, the achievement from the projects based on the UV detection technology has been selected by the Science School as a showcase in the Innovation Expo 2007 held in Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in the period of 14th - 18th Sept. 2007.

Integration
The innovations of this approach were successfully integrated into the students' learning process of the project courses in the following ways.

	Having selected their research topics, students need to learn in-depth about these scientific inventions through searching and reading extensively lots of related reviews, it encourages students' independent learning and critical evaluation of their own methodologies to be applied in their research work.
	To realize the practical outcome in the form of multimedia presentations, science games, demo & teaching kits, students will learn skills of computer animations, video editing, mechanical drawing, electronic circuit design and lab manual design.
	To get well prepared for participating the outreach activities, students will review the video files that record the presentations and demonstrations conducted by students participating the mini-lecture series in previous semesters. Their presentation skills were also got sharpen through rehearsal sessions and from the feedback and consultation offered by faculty members and staff from CELT.
	Through working in a small focused group, students developed their team working skills and general communication. Team work helps to enhance students' academic achievement and promote peer support and friendship.
	The experience of interacting with a large and broad audience in the outreach activities improved the confidence of the students.

Presentation Assessment Checklists
Presentation assessment checklists were distributed to the audience for evaluating the research work and the performance of the students during their end-semester presentations. The checklists contain 20 multiple-choice and 1 open-ended questions in five general aspects, which are the Content, Organization, Delivery technique, Challenging situation and Language. For each of all the aspects and their sub-aspects being evaluated, 5 is the full mark of score.

Figure 1, shows the response summary on the five aspects of the project presentations given by the participated students. As shown in Fig 1, all the 5 aspects' responses are positive. It shows that the audience was well satisfied with the planning, management and handling of the projects, as well as the performance of the student presenters. As an example, Fig. 2 displays the detailed response summary on the sub-aspects of the content of the project presentations. As shown in Fig.2, responses were overwhelmingly positive. Audience agrees that our projects are interesting, able to introduce up-to-date scientific discovery and the research ideas are supported with relevant scientific knowledge.

Demonstration Assessment Checklists
During our outreach activities, such as the HKUST Outreach Day and the science mini-lecture series in secondary schools, the students have demonstrated the demo/teaching kits developed from this scheme. Demonstration assessment checklists were distributed to the secondary school teachers and students at the end of the demonstration.The checklists contain 6 multiple choice and 1 open ended questions. Fig.3 is the summary of evaluation on the demonstrations received from the secondary school students and teachers. They agree that installation of such a setup in their school could stimulate their learning. They also agree that our demonstration arouses their interest in scientific research.

The Physics teaching lab has been providing kindly support in terms of the working space and technical support for some students involving the development of demo & teaching kits.

Staff members from CELT attended the oral presentations by the participated students at the end of each semester. They also helped design the question sheets for outreach activities and oral presentations for onsite evaluation assessment and conduct group or individual interviews after the presentations.

Prof. Alex Lau of Environmental Central Facility has viewed the demonstration of the air pollution monitoring system developed in this approach and offered his stimulating suggestions and positive comments.

School of Science has arranged a number of lab visits from overseas institutions to introduce some of our achievements and selected the projects based on the UV detection technology as a show case in the Innovation Expo 2007.