English Across the Curriculum

Introduction

English Across the Curriculum

English Across the Curriculum (EAC) loosely follows the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) approach in North America, and aims to increase students’ exposure to timely English learning resources without taking up much curriculum space (Chen & Morrison, 2021). A main objective of our EAC model is to work with discipline teachers to enhance students’ writing and speaking skills that they need in disciplinary contexts. It has now developed into an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional educational movement.

This model of EAC started at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) in 2013 with a Community of Practice (CoP) seed fund from the Hong Kong University Grants Committee. PolyU then reached out to three other universities: CityU, HKUST and CUHK to co-develop EAC with the first UGC TLRP funding in 2014, and HKBU joined the team in 2017 with the second UGC TLRP funding in 2017, which was the funding that enabled the development of the EAC mobile app called ‘Capstone Ninja’.

Main features of EAC

1. Offers students timely and targeted language learning resources (EAC resources) that focus on writing and speaking communication in the discipline.

2. Creates synergy between English teachers and teachers from different disciplines to collaborate on producing discipline-related EAC resources that students will find relevant and useful for their discipline assessment.

EAC deliverables

Student support

Supporting students by producing timely, tailored and ubiquitous learning resources

Staff support

Supporting staff from different disciplines through staff development workshops & meetings

One of the more recent funded EAC projects is Technology-enabled English across Curriculum, which aims at enhancing students’ English communicative competence beyond the standalone English language subjects to help students with the English they need to complete assessments in their content subjects. The project provides students with multi-modal English language learning resources appropriate to their discipline on platforms such as the LMS or via the Capstone Ninja mobile app.

Technology-enabled English across Curriculum brings together English language teachers and discipline academics (i.e. subject leaders and capstone project supervisors) on the design of English learning resources such as language tips and citation format, as well as technical experts in mobile application design and engineers of mobile app development.

Students use Capstone Ninja to learn, to schedule their workload, and to communicate with their supervisors. In The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Capstone Ninja has been widely used by students and their project supervisors in FAST, FB, FCE, FENG and FHSS.

EAC core members

More EAC members

Dr Eric Ho

Teaching Fellow at English Language Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Ms Mary Cheng

Instructor at English Language Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Dr Jane Robbins

Interim Director of English Language Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Dr Vickie Li

Instructor at English Language Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Ms Felicia Fang

Instructor at English Language Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Mr FranKie Har

Instructor at English Language Centre, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Awards received by EAC

2022 UGC Teaching Award

Over the past eight years, The English Across the Curriculum 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 UGC-funded universities, and making a significant positive impact on students’ English ability and learning experiences, as well as participating teachers’ teaching capacity and pedagogical approaches across universities.

2022 QS Reimagine Award

Spearheaded by PolyU, the inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary ‘English Across the Curriculum’ (EAC) project team has brought together English language teachers, discipline academics, and educational technologists in the development of an innovative and interactive mobile app called “Capstone Ninja”. The app delivers customised and discipline-specific English learning materials to address the challenges often encountered by students when preparing a capstone project. The EAC team recently also won the Hong Kong University Grants Committee Teaching Award 2022 in the Collaborative Teams category.

2021 Finalist for the EdTech Cool Tool Awards

2020 Community Award from the Association for Learning Technologist

A lifetime designation award of Distinguished Fellow

A lifetime designation award of Distinguished Fellow that honours distinguished scholars was bestowed on our Principal Investigator, Dr Julia Chen, in 2021 by the International Writing Across the Curriculum Association

English Across the Curriculum: Voices from Around the World Published in 2021 by WAC Clearinghouse / University of Colorado Press

Our publications

The EAC Team has had a number of inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary publications.

Capstone Ninja

Construction

Engineering

Logistics

Social Sciences

More publications

Chen, J., Chan, C., Man, V., & Tsang, E. (2021). Helping students from different disciplines with their final year/capstone project: Supervisors’ and students’ needs and requests. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 91-106). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.05

Chen, J., Chan, C., & Ng, A. (2021). English across the curriculum: Four journeys of synergy across disciplines and universities. In H. Lee, & B. Spolsky (Eds.) Localizing global English: Asian perspectives and practices (pp. 84-103). Oxon: Routledge.

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003082705

Chen, J., Lai, P., Chan, A., Man, V., & Chan, C-H. (2022). AI-assisted enhancement of student presentation skills: Challenges and opportunities. Sustainability, 15 (1), 196. Special issue on Language Education in the Age of AI and Emerging Technologies.

https://doi.org/10.3390/su15010196

Chen, J. & Morrison, B. (2021). Introduction. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 3-14). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.1.3

Chen, J. & Yap, V. (2020). Exploring the use of a mobile application designed for capstone projects for Hong Kong tertiary students. ICERI2020 Proceedings, (pp. 9033-9040). IATED. https://doi.org/10.21125/iceri.2020.2008

Fang, F. & Chak, Y. (2021). Supporting undergraduate student learning through reflective journal writing in a service-learning subject: An interdisciplinary collaborative approach. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 17-33). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.01

Lai, H. Y-Y., & Pang, A. K-W. (2021). Students’ perceptions of the use of English in a core business subject for first-year business students. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 59-71). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.03

Lim, G., & Ho, I. (2021). Mobile App and Final Year Project Proposal Writing for Engineering Students. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 109-125). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.06

Morrison, B., Chen, J., Lin, L., & Urmston, A. (Eds.). (2021). English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world. WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220

Townsend, M. A., Zawacki, T. M., Palmquist, M., & Chen, J. (2021). The (transnational) past, present, and future of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement. In B. Morrison, J. Chen, L. Lin, & A. Urmston. (Eds.) English across the curriculum: Voices from around the world (pp. 311-329). WAC Clearinghouse. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2021.1220.2.17