At the 2022 UGC Teaching Award, PolyU academics scooped two awards in the Early Career Faculty Members category and the Collaborative Team category respectively. Click on this link for more information about this year’s UGC Teaching Award.
Dr. Tulio Maximo received the 2022 UGC Teaching Award in the Early Career Faculty Members category
Dr. Tulio Maximo, Assistant Professor of the School of Design
An early career academic adopting empathy to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in and beyond education
Dr Tulio Maximo, as a child with ADHD, was inspired by his childhood learning experience to become the type of teacher that he had never had and to promote the kinds of learning experiences that he only could dream of. During his four years of teaching, armed with a strong will to help others, Dr Maximo has made significant contributions and achieved many of his personal aspirations, including (1) creating the subject Design Meets Disabilities, which focuses on integrating more inclusive design concepts into the design programme curriculum to promote diversity, equity and inclusion; (2) fostering a student-centred learning environment in which students feel comfortable and supported to develop, practise and demonstrate their design and thinking abilities; (3) effectively applying an empathic approach in guiding students to design more suitable products for users, especially those with disabilities and (4) actively collaborating with non-government organisations, such as the Salvation Army and the Society for the Blind, to engage students in community projects in which they apply their own empathy and develop a personal understanding of their users’ needs.
Dr Maximo’s teaching has made a positive and long-term impact on his students’ learning and personal development. His influence is evident in his students’ design products, academic performance, reflective writings and feedback, as well as in the prizes and workplace opportunities that his students have obtained. His dedication and commitment to creating an inclusive curriculum and learning experience are qualities that are valued in university teachers in the diverse society of Hong Kong.
The English Across the Curriculum (EAC) Team received the 2022 UGC Teaching Award in the Collaborative Teams category
The English Across the Curriculum (EAC) Team, led by Dr. Julia Chen (centre), Director of Educational Development of PolyU, with, from left to right, Dr. Elza Tsang (HKUST), Dr. Grace Lim (PolyU), Ms. Christy Chan (CityU) and Ms. Vicky Man (HKBU) as members
Timely and tailored English literacy support through innovative pedagogies and technologies
Over the past eight years, the English Across the Curriculum Team (“the Team”) has generated multiple innovative and effective strategies for developing students’ academic literacy, including the deployment of multi-modal English Across the Curriculum resources and the mobile app “Capstone Ninja”. The Team has successfully built a culture conducive to student-centred and interdisciplinary collaboration, thereby benefitting English teachers, discipline teachers, and their students in five UGC-funded institutions, and making a significant positive impact on students’ English ability and learning experiences, as well as participating teachers’ teaching capacity and pedagogical approaches across institutions.
In an extraordinary demonstration of their educational vision and passion, the Team exemplifies teaching excellence by addressing complex educational challenges with a clear vision and the determination to improve students’ language learning. Their proactive transformation of their vision into a purposeful mission offers a strategy for student-centred teaching enhancement. The Team clearly demonstrates how passion and creativity through aspiration, along with evidence-based innovation, can enable students to develop disciplinary literacy skills. The Team shows a strong commitment to continuous professional development, and is actively engaged in disseminating their EAC work and results through the scholarship of teaching and learning, e.g. organising international conferences, giving colloquia and invited talks, and publishing their experiences and research findings in journal papers and book chapters.
