Online National Security Law (NSL) education in Hong Kong: Qualitative evaluation based on focus groups

To enhance students' understanding of national security and Hong Kong National Security Law (HKNSL), an online course based on the framework of Law Abidance Leadership was developed, with a 3-hour self-paced online lecture plus seven hours of self-study materials. In this study, we invited 20 Senior-Year students to participate in semi-structured focus group interviews to share their learning experiences of national security education in an online environment. Results showed that the coding had high inter-rater reliability, and students generally held positive views on this self-paced online course. In addition, although students raised different comments and suggestions, most of them perceived the benefits and value of the course and acknowledged the need for undergraduate students to learn NSL-related knowledge. Most importantly, they did not perceive that the related education was brainwashing. Overall, the findings suggest that students appreciate the e-learning mode of NSL education, and the present findings echo the previous findings that the participants perceived NSL education to be beneficial.