English Across the Curriculum Team

Recipient of the 2022 UGC Teaching Award (Teams)

Team Leader: Dr Julia Chen (EDC)
Team Members: Dr Grace Lim (ELC), Ms Christy Chan, Ms Vicky Man, Dr Elza Tsang

(Click on the image to go to the 2022 UGC Teaching Award webpage)

The English Across the Curriculum Team is led by Dr Julia Chen from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University with Dr Grace Lim (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University), Ms Christy Chan (City University of Hong Kong), Ms Vicky Man (Hong Kong Baptist University), and Dr Elza Tsang (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) as members. Over the past eight years, 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 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.

The Team exemplifies teaching excellence by addressing complex educational challenges with a clear vision and 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 shows a strong commitment to continuous professional development, and is actively engaged in disseminating their work and results through the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Dr Tulio Maximo

Recipient of the 2022 UGC Teaching Award (Early Career Faculty Members)

(Click on the image to go to the 2022 UGC Teaching Award webpage)

Dr Maximo, who was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in his childhood, was inspired by his learning experience to become the type of teacher that he had never come across and to promote the kind of learning experiences that he had dreamed 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. To promote diversity, equity and inclusion, he has integrated more inclusive design concepts into the design programme curriculum and created a new subject known as “Design Meets Disabilities”. Through active collaborations with different non-government organisations, Dr Maximo has engaged his students in community projects and applied an empathic approach to guide them to develop a personal understanding of their users’ needs, thereby designing more suitable products for those with disabilities.

In this student-centred learning environment, his students feel comfortable and supported to develop, practise and demonstrate their design and thinking abilities. Dr Maximo's teaching has made a positive and long-term impact on his students' learning and personal development. His dedication and commitment to creating an inclusive curriculum and learning experience are exceptional qualities that deserve support and recognitions.

Dr Fridolin Ting (AMA)

Finalist of the 2020 UGC Teaching Award

(Click on the image to go to the 2020 UGC Teaching Award webpage)

Being passionate to integrate innovative pedagogies and active learning in STEM subjects

Dr Fridolin Ting formulates his teaching philosophy on a desire to integrate innovative pedagogies into his teaching that sustains an active learning environment while teaching fully online.

In order to engage his students to learn actively during online lessons, Dr Ting and his team has developed an anonymous online chat room app called YoTeach! which incorporates hand-drawing function. It livens his classes and enables his students to ask lots of questions by handwriting their equations and responding during lectures.

To encourage his students to participate actively in solving problems with their teachers and peers during classes, Dr Ting has conceptualized and implemented a novel interactive teaching strategy called collaborative problem-based learning and peer assessment supported by interactive online whiteboards. This pedagogical strategy is well-received by his students and they enjoy solving problems with their peers and marking each other’s solutions as if they were actual teachers.

Dr Ting and his team has developed 13 mobile apps and pedagogical tools for STEM subjects, benefiting over 120,000 local and international students and teachers to learn and teach better.

The Leadership & Intrapersonal Development Team

Recipient of the 2018 UGC Teaching Award (Teams)

Team Leader: Professor Daniel Shek (APSS)
Team Members: Dr Lu Yu (APSS), Dr Cecilia Ma (APSS), Ms Yammy Chak (APSS), Dr Jocelyn Lin (APSS)

Advancing Our Formal Undergraduate Curriculum for Holistic Youth Development

Professor Daniel Shek leads a team of four dedicated teachers to launch the innovative Leadership and Intrapersonal Development (LIPD) initiative with four different yet related subjects in the undergraduate curriculum in 2010. The aim is to nurture essential personal and social competences in the students through the experiential learning approach, and to enhance the undergraduate curriculum, thus providing a holistic learning experience for every first-year student in the new four-year undergraduate curriculum.

The Team recently expanded the LIPD Initiative to more students through collaborations with other universities and post-secondary institutions in Hong Kong, mainland China and belt-and-road countries. To date, the LIPD Team and Initiative have served over 35 organisations and 36,000 people, including primary school, secondary school and university students, other participants, schools, NOGs and communities. The Team also actively engages in evaluations and self-reflections to facilitate evidence-based practice. The Team demonstrates its academic leadership in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The team leader and members have published over 140 papers, and the Team has hosted four international conferences on the topic of LIPD. The significant impact and value of the work of the Team have earned it local and international recognition. Two years in succession, in 2016/17 and 2017/18, the four LIPD subjects won four awards at QS Reimagine Education Award, a prestigious international competition rewarding innovative initiatives aimed at enhancing student learning outcomes and employability.

Dr Shara Lee (HTI)

Finalist of the 2018 UGC Teaching Award (Early Career Faculty Members)

Young Medical Educator with a Caring Heart for Her Students and Their Patients

In her fifth year as a teacher at PolyU, Dr Lee has formulated a new curriculum framework that incorporates diverse pedagogies emphasizing students’ life-long learning and teaching skills to the betterment of future health and patient care.

One of her key innovations has been the incorporation of peer training under supervision of clinical skills, i.e., a practice in which students train each other performing standardized procedures. Peer teaching allows students additional opportunities to practice basic skills and has been shown in the evaluation data to foster both significant improvement in students’ confidence in performing tasks and their assessed essential clinical skills.

Cognizant of the lack of emergency training in the radiography and radiation therapy curriculum, Dr Lee also implemented clinical skills training to support students and current practitioners in the profession. While teaching her subject, she incorporates a suite of effective pedagogies and technologies into her teaching to develop professional competencies in her students. Besides practical and clinical skills, Dr Lee also considers care to be a key element in the management of patients. In this regard, she developed the voluntary services module (VSM) to provide opportunities for her students to serve and interact with patients and their family members. These interactions bring a sense of meaning and determination to inspire students to provide holistic care for their patients in their professions.

Ir Dr Wallace Lai (LSGI)

Finalist of the 2017 UGC Teaching Award (Early Career Faculty Members)

A Leading Educator in the Emerging Field of Utility Management and Surveying​

A dedicated researcher, Dr Wallace Lai is also an innovator in curricular design, laboratory spaces and their pedagogical interaction. He is deeply committed to his students’ learning. His educational design of their learning experiences reflects this commitment. Although he is only in his fifth year at PolyU, Dr Lai has established himself in a relatively new curriculum in the emerging programme specialism of Utility Management and Surveying (UMS). After taking leadership of the UMS programme upon his arrival, Dr Lai redesigned the curriculum in an interdisciplinary manner to provide training and tutelage for students, who will need to confront real-world problems in the field of underground utilities. To implement the new curriculum, Dr Lai designed a unique, fit-for-purpose laboratory, the Underground Utility Survey Laboratory (UUS Lab), which is both configurable and scalable to real-life scenario modelling and serves as a classroom for training students to see the unseen. Seeing the unseen is Dr Lai’s motto and accurately describes how students are forced to undergo trial by fire in the laboratory and think like young professionals working in the field. The UUS Lab is the first of its kind. It has received visitors from both nearby and international universities. The College of Surveying and Geo-informatics at Tongji University has modelled its own laboratory after Dr Lai’s original configuration. Dr Lai chaired the 16th International Conference of Ground Penetrating Radar in 2016, an event with over 200 participants from 29 countries, in which his students took the lead in planning, organising and hosting.

The Service-Learning Team

Recipient of the 2016 UGC Teaching Award

Team Leader: Dr Grace Ngai (COMP/OSL)
Team Member: Dr Stephen Chan (COMP/OSL)

Transforming Students through Academic Service-Learning

Dr Ngai and Dr Chan are currently Associate Professors in the Department of Computing at PolyU, and Dr Chan is also Head of the Office of Service-Learning (OSL). They believe that education should give students the space and opportunity to explore the roles they wish to play in society while pursuing academic study. As a team, Dr Ngai and Dr Chan have advanced the practice of academic Service Learning (SL), which has transformed the learning experience of PolyU students. They have formed multicultural student teams through partnerships with local NGOs, organised student-exchange programmes and piloted an innovative ‘global SL classroom’ initiative that allows PolyU students and their overseas peers to attend the same lectures and develop project ideas via video conferencing, and then implement projects together in person at the service location. Over the last 10 years, Dr Ngai and Dr Chan have increased the coverage of their service projects from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland to Cambodia, Myanmar, Rwanda and Kyrgyzstan, improving the lives of people in need and inspiring the students involved to become responsible professionals and global citizens. Dr Ngai and Dr Chan have demonstrated outstanding academic leadership in helping university management to conceptualise SL as an integral component of the PolyU undergraduate curriculum and implement SL as an institutional teaching and learning strategy. As a result, thousands of students enrol on SL courses every year. 

Dr Shirley Ngai (RS)

Recipient of the 2016 UGC Teaching Award (Early Career Faculty Memebers)

Exemplary Early-Career Innovator 

Dr Shirley Ngai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Despite having only 3.5 years of teaching experience, Dr Ngai has established herself an innovator in the implementation, development and enhancement of computerised medical simulation for physiotherapy training in Hong Kong. Dr Ngai always prioritises students’ learning outcomes. She has devised various possible means of bridging the gap between clinical placement and classroom training, such as blended learning, a flipped-classroom approach and the use of computerised medical simulation. Dr Ngai is also a humble teacher who is eager to learn from others. She experiments with a variety of evolving strategies to improve the learning environment, helping her students to learn better and more competently and confidently apply what they have learned in the classroom to real patient treatment before and after graduation. Shirley has led three educational projects designed to progressively enhance the use of computerised simulation for physiotherapy teaching and learning, and these projects have had positive impacts on her students’ learning. She has also engaged actively in projects with colleagues from other disciplines, and shared her experiences with other medical professionals to increase her knowledge and skills and thereby improve her teaching for her students’ benefit. Her commitment to helping her students to become critically minded and competent clinicians capable of effectively serving the community, and her remarkable achievements in teaching and research over the last 3.5 years, have proven Dr Shirley Ngai to be a remarkably determined young university teacher. 

Mr Rémi Leclerc (SD)

Finalist of the 2016 UGC Teaching Award

Enhancing Design Education with the Ground-Breaking 'Design Play' Framework

Rémi Leclerc is an Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design. He is both an influential researcher in design education and an outstanding design educator. He created the Design Play framework based on insights drawn from his industrial experience and intensive research in toy design and design learning and his teaching and learning practice. Design Play is a breakthrough in design education that infuses play into teaching and learning to help students think about design more divergently, critically, analytically and creatively. It also enhances students’ creative appreciation of design thinking and processes. Rémi’s teaching approach underpinned by Design Play has been highly acclaimed by international design educators, renowned designers and manufacturing companies. The excellent design outputs of Rémi and his students have earned them numerous grants and awards, including the G-Mark Good Design Award and the Hong Kong Young Design Talent and The Hong Kong Social Enterprise Challenge. 

Rémi and Design Play have had a strong positive impact on his students in different ways, on design education at different levels; on industry across different sectors; and on the general public from various backgrounds. Rémi has forged a link between academia and industry by bridging the needs of both. He has also sensitised students’ environmental consciousness and nurtured their sense of social responsibility by engaging them in his research and consultancy projects with manufacturers, the government and NGOs. Rémi has successfully helped students to learn design and to design better, and in turn their designs have contributed to shape a better world.

Dr Gail Forey (ENGL)

Recipient of the 2015 UGC Teaching Award

Dr Gail Forey has been teaching at PolyU for 19 years. She is currently the Programme Leader for the Master in English Language Teaching, and in August will take over as the Progamme Leader for the Doctorate in Applied Language Sciences. She teaches a wide range of subjects, and specializes in teaching Discourse Analysis and Professional Communication to undergraduate students. She is held with great respect by students and colleagues as an inspirational teacher and also as a role model for life. She was the recipient of the President’s Award for Excellent Performance Achievement in Teaching and awarded the Honorary Professorship by the Linguistic Society of the Philippines in 2013/14. 

An Exceptionally Excellent Teacher who Strengthens the Synergy between Teaching & Research; Advocates for the Scholarship of Teaching &Learning; and Actively Promotes Teacher Professional Development 

Dr Forey is a distinguished academic and formidable educator who is whole-heartedly committed to the importance of making a difference through teaching. She continually pursues opportunities to advance her professional teaching skills and knowledge, in order to improve the support she provides to her students. She challenges students to reach their potential through a range of interactive resources, and in particular energizes her students by apprenticing them into the world of independent research and inquiry learning. In recent years, she has led multi-million dollar large-scale consultancy projects which focus on the professional development of teachers across primary, secondary and tertiary contexts. Through these projects and other collaborative ventures, she has successfully supported many teachers, both locally and internationally, to become even more active and reflective as practitioners. The workshops offer teachers various insights and tools to improve their pedagogy, which will lead to improvement in their student’s academic performance. The effort she has invested into advancing her own and other teachers’ teaching practice is tremendous and the impact she has had on students, teachers and education across different sectors is phenomenal.

Dr Robert Wright (MM)

Finalist of the 2015 UGC Teaching Award

Dr Robert Wright is an Associate Professor, in The Department of Management and Marketing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He was the recipient of the President’s Award for Excellent Performance in Teaching in 2004/05 and has been nominated multiple times for the same award.

A Great Teacher of Tomorrow’s Thought Leaders

Dr Wright is an inspirational teacher who helps students overcome their weaknesses, build confidence and achieve new heights. He aspires to educate the next generation of thought leaders for a complicated world. In pursuit of this goal, he has tackled many important but pedagogically challenging aspects of university teaching, breaking new ground at both the conceptual and practical levels. He empirically derived a heuristic framework of seven core competences (“the Staying F.O.C.U.S.E.D. Philosophy”) with input from stakeholders and uses it to underpin all aspects of learning. He has also orchestrated a broad range of pedagogical innovations to create a uniquely authentic, engaging and coherent experience for students.

Dr Wright turns lectures into dynamic exchanges of ideas, engages students in conversations with distinguished scholars and business leaders, and sends students to real companies to work on real problems needing real solutions. He keeps students intellectually, emotionally and morally engaged at all times. Instead of trying to simplify the world for students, Dr Wright chooses to let students experience the full complexity of reality and stand by them as they learn to stand on their own feet. Remarkably, his students are transformed within the space of a semester, and their learning evidently stays with them and continues to inspire them throughout their lives and work even years after graduation.

Professor Eric Tsui (ISE)

Finalist of the 2014 UGC Teaching Award

A Leading Educator in e-Learning, Online Learning and Blended Learning

Professor Eric Tsui is an outstanding educator and a renowned expert in knowledge management who has inspired much advancement in the way knowledge management education is delivered. His work in blended learning has attracted international acclaim. The master’s programme that he has led and constantly improved over the past 11 years is regarded by many Asian universities as the role model of blended learning approach. He spearheaded the integrative use of personal learning environment and network (PLE&N) in university teaching. Through this landmark innovation, he engages students in intellectual as well as information exchanges with their peers, graduates and practitioners from the field and exposes students to the social connectionist view of learning, thereby enabling them to transcend the boundary of conventional classroom settings and transform into independent and inquisitive lifelong learners.

Professor Tsui also exploits his extensive network and a wide array of present-day technologies to organise webinars in which students can interact directly with world-class scholars and to create online learning materials of exceptional quality to facilitate scenario-based learning and innovative blended learning approaches such as flipped classroom. His teaching has a lasting impact on his students. Beyond his own classroom, Professor Tsui is also a charismatic ambassador of eLearning with notable achievements in driving eLearning development both within his own institution and internationally, spreading his exemplary pedagogical use of technology wherever he goes.

Professor Alan Lau (ME)

Recipient of the 2013 UGC Teaching Award

Prof Alan Lau, Professor and Associate Dean (Industrial Relations) of the Faculty of Engineering and recipient of the PolyU President’s Award for Excellent Performance and Achievement in Teaching. He sits on several programme committees to oversee the quality of the programme and student learning outcomes. He also takes a significant role in advocating the industry-university partnership through his chairmanship and membership in various professional bodies, such as the International Multifunctional materials and Structures Council and the Institution of Engineering Designers.

Engaging Students in the Real World; Engaging the Industry to Enhance Learning & Teaching

Prof Lau is an inspiring teacher, an accomplished researcher and a recognised expert in the field of mechanical and aerospace engineering, materials science and product design. He believes in engaging the real world in his teaching. He has taken the partnership between academics and industry to a new level. Over a carefully planned program that runs over a three-year period, students are introduced to the perspectives of industry and to real-world training in design. Finally they create and promote a real product. The result is a deeply engaged, synergistic relationship between the students and the companies, with the firms benefitting from the solutions posed by these students as the students profiting from their professional development. What Prof Lau calls his "Industry-Engaged Outcome-Based Approach" results in a true collaboration between the academic and industrial sectors.

Dr Julia Chen (ELC)

Finalist of the 2013 UGC Teaching Award

Dr Julia Chen, Associate Director of the English Language Centre, Chair of the Faculty of Humanities Learning and Teaching Committee, and a two-time recipient of the PolyU President’s Award for Excellent Performance in Teaching and Service. She teaches students from higher diploma to PhD level. She also sits on several committees and workgroups, such as the Learning and Teaching Committee, the Working group on Teaching Evaluation Practice, the Working Group on the Development of E-Learning and Community of Practice on Enhancing Students’ English Abilities, to help enhance and promote quality teaching in the university.

Engaging Students in Continuous Learning; Taking a Scholarly Approach to Teaching Developments

Dr Chen believes that an excellent teacher has a profound impact on student learning through the effective planning and delivery of energetic and adaptive lessons, which engages students in continuous learning and puts pedagogic vision into action for students’ benefit. She addresses departmental and institutional strategies, takes a scholarly approach to teaching developments, and mobilizes fellow teachers to work towards goals and pursue excellence together.

UGC Selection Panel's Comments: “the Selection Panel was favorably impressed by your work in bringing not only excellence in language instruction to your students, but also the deep and meaningful reasons why they need to care about this. Your enthusiasm and passion for teaching were self-evident, and we congratulate you on your fierce dedication to your students’ learning”.