Digital Education and Information Technology

The year the pandemic struck, CityU moved all teaching online in just eight days — not a desperate last-minute scramble, but the payoff from a system migration planned five years earlier. This article lays out CityU's digital education infrastructure: its Learning Management System (LMS), network and computing resources, email and identity accounts, and its teaching policy response to the generative AI wave alongside the online pivot during the pandemic.

IT service details (ports, capacity, versions) are updated annually; this article relies on verifiable, publicly stated institutional facts.

# 1. The Learning Management System: From Blackboard to Canvas

CityU's central Learning Management System (LMS) underwent a migration from Blackboard to Canvas. In 2015^※, the University switched to Canvas, provided by Instructure, replacing the earlier Blackboard system, citing Canvas's stability and its ability to scale with growing online learning demand.

The current LMS is provided by Instructure, delivered as a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Singapore^※. CityU's official digital learning support page likewise identifies Canvas as the student LMS portal^※.

In other words: CityU's current LMS is Canvas; Moodle is not CityU's central LMS — this library has found no official page confirming Moodle as a university-wide platform, and to that extent the claim that "CityU uses Moodle" is without corroboration.

# 2. The Online Pivot During the Pandemic

According to the Instructure case study, during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, CityU used Canvas to switch to fully online teaching within eight days^※. This rapid transition was made possible not only by the fact that the LMS platform migration had been completed back in 2015, but also by CityU's approach of embedding mobile learning into its digital education planning — a system migration carried out five years earlier translated, in the midst of a pandemic, into the agility to go "fully online in eight days."

# 3. Computing and Network Resources

CityU's IT services are primarily delivered by IT Services and the Computing Services Centre (CSC)^※. The CSC is responsible for providing central computing facilities and technical support across the University. Verifiable resources include:

• Campus Wi-Fi and eduroam: CityU joined eduroam in 2008^※; staff and students can use their CityU accounts to connect to the SSID "eduroam" for free internet access at any eduroam member institution worldwide. Full campus Wi-Fi coverage and a VPN (Virtual Private Network) are also provided.
• Teaching studios and printing: The CSC runs 10 teaching studios in the Teaching Studio Area of the Li Dak Sum Yip Yio Chin Academic Building (LI)^※, equipped with high-specification computers, and offers colour, express, and network printing services.

Research computing resources, such as High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters, fall under research support; no unified external specifications are stated on public pages, so this article does not record specific figures (no single public source states the HPC specifications).

# 4. Email and Identity Accounts

CityU's email and identity services are predominantly cloud-based, hosted on Microsoft's infrastructure:

• Student email: Students use university email accounts under the domain @my.cityu.edu.hk^※, hosted on the Microsoft 365 cloud email system.
• Alumni email: Alumni also have access to a Microsoft 365-based email service.

This gives CityU staff and students access to the Microsoft 365 / Office ecosystem (mail, collaboration, cloud storage, etc.) as their day-to-day study and work platform.

# 5. Generative AI and Teaching

Faced with the impact of generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT, CityU has adopted an approach of "acknowledging utility, regulating use":

• CityU issued the Guidelines on the Use of Generative AI Tools in Teaching and Learning, which apply to all University teaching-related activities and assessment tasks. The guidelines state that the University recognises the utility of GenAI tools and encourages their appropriate use in teaching and learning to promote CityU's Graduate Outcomes, while stressing that this depends on the specific context and manner of use.
• On the staff side, CityU's Talent and Education Development Office has run training programmes such as "Building AI Knowledge and Skills for Curriculum Development" to help teaching staff integrate AI literacy into course design.

Specific provisions of these guidelines are revised annually; the latest official CityU version takes precedence. The permissible scope of generative AI use in assessment (fully prohibited / limited use / encouraged use) is typically devolved to individual courses to specify and is a course-level arrangement. This two-tier structure — institutional-level principles, course-level implementation — is consistent with CityU's sustained commitment, seen in the establishment of the School of Data Science in 2018 and the College of Computing in 2024 (see "CityU in the Age of AI" in the 12-misc module).

# 6. Summary

CityU's digital education infrastructure is built around a backbone of Canvas (LMS) + Microsoft 365 (email and collaboration) + eduroam / campus Wi-Fi (connectivity), supplemented by the CSC's teaching studios and computing support. In the AI era, CityU is responding to the impact of generative AI on teaching and learning with institutionalised guidelines and staff training. The overall orientation is similar to that of most Hong Kong universities — platforms outsourced to mature cloud service providers, and policy shifting from "ban" to "regulated use." The Library's learning commons, "The Oval," is also equipped with statistical analysis and programming tools (see "Run Run Shaw Library and the Indra and Harry Banga Gallery"), which complements the computing infrastructure described here and together shapes CityU's computing-heavy character — a place where even the library computers can run code.