News

We are delighted to announce a significant grant award for the research project titled “Reliable Knowledge for Health Care: Process and Practice of Shared Decision Making”, in which Dr Susan Bridges, Associate Professor in the Faculty’s Academic Unit of Social Contexts and Policies of Education, is a key participant. The project as a whole has received a grant of 3.7 million euros from the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland. In the sub-project in social scientific interaction analysis, Dr Bridges will collaborate as an external collaborator and scientific advisor in the planning and execution of interactional ethnography, and in theory development on information literacy. The sub-project has been funded with 1.2 million euros for the first three years. 

The project is led by Professor Johanna Ruusuvuori, Head of the Unit of Social Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Finland. The other external collaborators are Professor Markus Reuber, Medical School, University of Sheffield, UK; Dr Rebecca Barns, Senior Research Fellow, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, UK; and Dr Merran Toerian, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of York, UK.

We are delighted to announce that the following colleagues have won the University’s 2020 Teaching Excellence Awards:

Outstanding Teaching Award 

Individual award

Dr Anita Wong, Associate Professor, Academic Unit of Human Communication, Development, and Information Sciences

Teaching Innovation Award

Individual award

Miss Nicole Tavares, Senior Lecturer, Academic Unit of Teacher Education and Learning Leadership

The Selection Panel was deeply impressed with the awardees’ dedication to teaching, their tireless and creative efforts to make learning enjoyable and challenging, and the impact that they have made on their students’ learning.  Many congratulations to the awardees!

HKU’s first-ever Virtual Information Day for Undergraduate Admissions took place on October 31, 2020 and was a resounding success. For our Faculty, Information Day is the annual flagship event for providing local secondary school students and associate degree students with undergraduate admissions information. We organised a range of online activities including a Faculty Central Talk in the morning and nine admissions talks in the afternoon. Real-time chats were also available throughout the event to answer incoming questions from the visitors. The event attracted nearly 1,700 participants.

Although a face-to-face Information Day was not possible due to the pandemic, a series of online activities were organised in the HKU iMonth (October 2020) prior to the Virtual Information Day, so as to provide prospective students with sufficient information. In the days leading up to the Virtual Information Day, several Taster Lectures were also delivered, to give the audience an impression of what it is like to study in the Faculty.

Professor A. Lin Goodwin, Dean of the Faculty, remarked, “The whole event demonstrated an excellent example of Faculty teamwork, as our teachers, administrative staff and students were all actively involved, and it made me very proud to be Dean of our Faculty.”

The virtual fair is still available throughout November 2020 and can be joined at https://hkuinfoday.vfairs.com.

To promote professional dialogue about Science/Physics teaching and learning, an interactive workshop was co-organised by the Faculty’s School-University Partnerships Office and Ms Promail Leung, Senior Lecturer in the Faculty’s Academic Unit of Teacher Education and Learning Leadership, on October 24, 2020. The workshop aimed at broadening and deepening our relationships with schools and teachers through teachers’ professional development activities.  A total of 36 participants, including both in- and pre-service teachers and officials from the Education Bureau, took part in the workshop.

The workshop was hosted by Ms Leung with two in-service teachers as guest speakers, who shared their vivid teaching experiences in Science and STEM Education. Mr Roy Sin from Yuen Long Merchants Association Secondary School demonstrated his interest in promoting techniques and exemplars in Integrated Science and Physics subjects, while Ms Emily Cheung from Lok Sin Tong Yu Kan Hing Secondary School shared her 40-year teaching philosophy in promoting science education.

Participants were inspired by the speakers’ student-centred lesson design. Professional dialogue about teaching and learning was also promoted during the workshop.

We are delighted to announce the award recipients of the Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award for 2019-20. A Selection Panel made up of Faculty colleagues and students met to look at applications for this year’s awards. They were deeply impressed with the awardees’ wholehearted commitment to their teaching, their innovative and tireless efforts to engage with students and curriculum development and the impact that they have on students’ learning and personal growth. After a very positive discussion, the Panel has selected the following winners:

Faculty Outstanding Teaching Award (Team)

Dr Yvonne Huang (Team leader), Dr Chloe Chu, Dr Chun Lai, Ms Wendy Lai and Ms Louisa Yen (Fostering Agentic Professionals Team)

The team led by Yvonne impressed the Selection Panel with their efforts to support student learning through a clear focus on engagement with international schools and community partners through the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) programme. The team has collaborated over several years to design and implement this unique programme and have garnered praise and recognition from the International Baccalaureate Organisation. The theme of fostering students’ agency was well articulated throughout the portfolio.

Mr Alan Wong (Team leader), Dr Susan Bridges, Ms Jo Wong and Mr Murphy Wong (E-learning team)

The Selection Panel recognised the tireless and terrific work of the e-learning team, which started several years before the recent high demand for e-learning. It was felt that without the leadership of the team, many colleagues in the Faculty would have found teaching this year even more challenging than it has actually been. The team has continued to provide pedagogical expertise and mentoring to the Faculty as colleagues pursue a better understanding of how best to integrate technology into our teaching and learning.

Faculty Early Career Teaching Award

Dr Nutsa Kobakhidze (Academic Unit of Social Contexts and Policies of Education)

Nutsa’s teaching philosophy “pedagogy of care” was so well-presented in her portfolio with strong and rich evidence of her engagement in student learning, curriculum innovation and design, assessment and feedback. The Selection Panel was also deeply impressed by the way that Nutsa has continued to innovate in her courses, and contribute her expertise across programmes and disciplines. The Panel felt that her professional development really stood out as evidenced by the feedback from her students, colleagues and other stakeholders she engages in her courses.

Emergency Remote Teaching Award

This new category is set up this year to recognise and share the good practices of colleagues and teaching teams during this year’s suspension of face-to-face classes. The two winners are:

Ms Tanya Kempston (Academic Unit of Teacher Education and Learning Leadership (TELL))

The Selection Panel unanimously recognised the tireless work that Tanya has done this year to make online teaching and learning more effective and inclusive for students and in an area such as drama which many might feel is simply too challenging to transfer to an online mode of delivery. Her critical reflection on her practices and a clearly articulated vision of how she might further improve them demonstrated her striving for teaching excellence. Her “Hear This!” radio drama was such an impressive initiative and showed how her innovations with e-learning can also bridge with local schools, teachers and students.

Ms Nicole Tavares (Academic Unit of TELL)

Nicole was seen by the Selection Panel as an exemplary demonstration of how to maximise our remote teaching tools. She delivers her online classes impeccably and provides a clear pathway for her students to interact, engage and contribute throughout classes. The Panel felt she had gone beyond what is expected of colleagues – especially this year with so many distractions and disruptions. Evidence from student feedback as well as support letters from colleagues, school teachers and the EDB say so much about Nicole’s good work.

Please join us in congratulating the above colleagues!

A virtual press conference on the third report from the “eCitizen Education 360” study was held on November 3, 2020. The latest research results focus on teachers’ online teaching experience during the school suspension period due to COVID-19. The findings shed light on how to help teachers better prepare for the new normal. The press conference was well-attended by around 110 participants.

From the findings, it was concluded that teachers with “Progressive Innovators” qualities have significantly higher Online Learning and Teaching (L&T) Preparedness and self-efficacy, and all teachers have the potential to become a “Progressive Innovator”. In-depth collaboration on digital pedagogy can cultivate such teachers.

Also, the capacity to adopt student-centred pedagogy and to design and implement online interactive learning are key to enhancing teachers’ Online L&T Preparedness. Teachers also found that fostering students’ critical thinking and creative capacities, and using data to support the assessment and feedback are much more challenging than producing teaching videos and using videoconferencing tools.

The project team put forward several recommendations on multiple levels. On the policy and system level, professional network among teachers and schools should be expanded. On the school leadership level, the e-learning coordination teams’ professional development roles and functions should be established and/or strengthened. Finally, on the individual teacher level, teachers should leverage the learning opportunities offered by various networks to strength personal professional confidence and competence.

The research team was led by Professor Nancy Law, Deputy Director of the Centre of Information Technology in Education of the Faculty, and Dr Tan Cheng Yong, Associate Professor, the Faculty’s Academic Unit of Social Contexts and Policies of Education.

For more details of the “eCitizen Education 360” Project and the bulletin, please visit https://ecitizen.hk/360. To review the e-version of the press release, and download photos, presentation file and further reference materials, please visit http://web.edu.hku.hk/press.

The HKU Excellence Awards Presentation Ceremony 2019 for academic and administrative staff members was held on October 20, 2020. This annual event celebrates the exceptional achievements of our academics in teaching and learning and in research, and recognises their contributions to knowledge exchange with society. It also honours the outstanding performances of our professional services colleagues.

We are very proud to announce that Ms Jo Wong from the Faculty’s e-Learning Team won the Professional Services Award (Individual) for her efforts in designing innovative online resources to motivate students to learn with great interest.

Please visit https://uvision.hku.hk/playvideo.php?mid=23971 to watch the video on her accomplishments.

Many congratulations!

A series of three school forums was organised in September 2020 to foster school-university partnerships, enhance our Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) students’ understanding of school practice and better equip them for the teaching profession. All the forums were very well received: our student teachers were genuinely inspired and enlightened by the principals’ sharing.

In view of the calmer pandemic situation at the time and in particular the tremendous support from the School Principal, the third forum was held on-site at Fanling Kau Yan College as well as online (via Zoom) on September 23, 2020. This forum was followed by a panel discussion on “how to prepare yourself to be a life-long holistic professional teacher”. To extend support to the PGDE students and our school partners, Professor A. Lin Goodwin, Dean of the Faculty of Education, attended the forum in person and shared her teaching experiences in the panel discussion. She received a warm welcome from Ms Veronica Yau, Principal of Fanling Kau Yan College.

Dr Cecilia Chan, Associate Professor in the Faculty’s Academic Unit of Teacher Education and Learning Leadership has won the Faculty KE Award 2020.

The winning project is entitled “Transforming Holistic Competency Development and Assessment in Higher Education and Beyond”. In the project, Dr Chan organised various programmes and activities for local secondary and tertiary students to enhance their holistic competency, which includes different types of generic skills, positive values and attitudes. They have far-reaching impacts on students, teachers and the education industry as a whole. In addition, Dr Chan also provided many consultations and professional development workshops for non-profit, government-related organisations and universities in various countries across Asia and Europe.

The Faculty KE Awards were introduced in 2011 to recognise each Faculty’s outstanding KE accomplishment that has made demonstrable economic, social or cultural impacts to benefit the community, business/industry, or partner organisations. The selection criteria include evidence of the KE project’s link with excellence in research or in teaching & learning at HKU; evidence of an effective engagement process with the non-academic sector(s); and evidence of demonstrable benefits to the community, business/industry, or partner organisations.

Our hearty congratulations to Dr Chan for her achievements in KE!

The International Virtual Forum: Students-as-Partners in Online Learning - Voices from HKU was successfully organised by the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on September 30, 2020, with several members of the Faculty actively participating. The Forum attracted over 1,200 participants from countries in the Asia-Pacific Region, Middle East and Europe to discuss online learning in the current challenging time and its impact on higher education in the coming years.

The Forum started with an opening by Professor Xiang Zhang, President and Vice-Chancellor, HKU. This was followed by a conversation between Professor Zhang and Dr Susan Bridges, Associate Professor in the Faculty’s Academic Unit of Social Contexts and Policies of Education and Director of CETL, HKU, during which they discussed how HKU provides leadership in teaching and learning, supports staff members and students, and continues to strengthen its position as Asia's Global University.

A keynote speech was made by Professor Nancy Law from the Faculty’s Academic Unit of Teacher Education and Learning Leadership (TELL), focusing on designs for learning and insights gained from and beyond COVID-19.

Dr Cecilia Chan, Associate Professor of TELL, served as the Forum Chair and facilitated a panel discussion with senior leaders in education from Australia, England, Finland and Ireland.

Ms Katherine Lee, one of the Faculty’s PhD candidates, was on the student panel in the “Voices of HKU” chat with Professor Ian Holliday, HKU’s Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning). They discussed the concerns, challenges and ideas going forward pre-, during and post-COVID-19.

To watch the video recording of the Forum, please visit https://www.cetl.hku.hk/iforum2020/programme/.