About Us > Background

The change to a 4-year undergraduate degree curriculum has given PolyU an opportunity to strengthen our curricula to provide a more holistic education for students while maintaining a strong professional focus. With the change of the curriculum structure, Academic Advising (AA) is essential to:

  1. facilitate students to have smooth transition from high school to PolyU;
  2. enable students to make decisions regarding their academic study;
  3. inspire their self-understanding; &
  4. strengthen the connection between the students and their home departments.

In fact, AA is not new in PolyU as many Departments/Schools at PolyU have existing academic advising systems. The practice of AA is expected to align with the broad principles and guidelines stipulated in the policy paper, which stated that.

Academic advising at PolyU aims to help students to make informed and intelligent academic decisions/choices about their study at PolyU that suit their intellectual, professional and personal goals. It is instrumental to promoting student success, and plays a vital role in enhancing students” overall learning experience at PolyU. (LTC/42/A4, paragraph 4)

One of the key missions of the Office of General University Requirements (OGUR) is to promote the consistent and quality practice of AA in PolyU. The evolvement of AA in the PolyU community requires the building of people network and the collective wisdom from the network. In addition, the development of a series of sharing and learning activities is envisaged to strengthen the connection and inter-communication between different stakeholders in the community. This Academic Advising CoP aims to:

  1. develop a mechanism which can enhance the communication network of different stake-holders in PolyU;
  2. share and promote good practices of AA;
  3. ultimately leading the PolyU community to implement AA in a more fruitful and effective way.