PolyU teams shine in QS Reimagine Education Awards 2024, winning one Gold, two Silvers and the Global Education Award

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) strives to advance teaching and learning innovations and to develop cutting-edge educational technologies for delivering rich and impactful learning experience to students. With their innovative teaching and learning projects, three PolyU teams won a Gold Award, two Silver Awards and one of the two overall awards, the Global Education Award, at the QS Reimagine Education Awards 2024 respectively. This represents an exceptional PolyU performance, particularly as the first Hong Kong institution to receive the overall award.

Led by Dr Wai-chi Rodney CHU, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Applied Social Sciences, the interdisciplinary team garnered both the Gold Award in the Smart Omnichannel Campus category and the Global Education Award. The winning project “Engage, Empower, Excel: PolyU’s Smart Campus Innovation” leverages the synergy between various educational technology solutions to adapt to the learning habits of the new-generation tech-savvy students.

The project features the development of a generative AI chatbot, Virtual Assistant TIMS (VAT), which learns from course materials and teachers’ teaching styles. Operating through instant messaging platforms, VAT responds to student inquiries anytime and anywhere through text, voice and video messages. Its Dialogue Podcast System utilises advanced natural language processing technology to transform challenging academic content into engaging conversational podcasts to improve students’ learning efficiency. There is also the Artificial Intelligence Review Assessment System (AIReAS) that offers immediate feedback and feedforward on assignments, enabling students to engage in cycles of continuous improvement that align with their progress. The platform is moving towards mobile learning management system integration and personalised learning path planning.

Dr Shara LEE, Associate Professor of the Department of Health Technology and Informatics and her team won the Silver Award in the Nurturing Values and Ethics category with the project “HEROCARE: Empowering Compassionate Healthcare and Medical Education for Future Professionals”. Integrating experiential learning with clinical service, the project helps minimise the physical and emotional stress of paediatric cancer patients while preparing healthcare students to deliver compassionate, patient-centred care.

Utilising PolyU’s HiVE, the first large-scale X-Reality hybrid classroom in Hong Kong, the team has engaged students to design and lead a personalised preparation workshop for each patient by bringing into the virtual classroom their favourite cartoon characters or incorporating interactive games and storytelling through AI and immersive technologies. The project has set new standards for sustainable, empathetic training by providing future healthcare professionals with opportunities to interact and communicate with patients and carers. Through this experience, students can develop critical empathy, ethical decision-making skills and learn how to best support and care for patients and carers.

Titled “Habitat Green: A Hong Kong-African Collaboration in Sustainability Education and Action”, the project led by Dr Grace NGAI, Head of the Service-Learning and Leadership Office and Associate Professor of the Department of Computing, seized a Silver Award in the Sustainability Education Action category. The project seeks to promote experiential, community-focused learning and create platforms for teachers and students to collaborate on sustainability initiatives.

As one of PolyU’s largest and most impactful Service-Learning programmes, the project takes students to developing countries in Africa to collaborate with young counterparts in providing services to local impoverished communities. These services include installing home solar power systems, offering health assessments, conducting workshops in tailoring and fashion, and more. Based on the establishment of mutually empowering partnerships between universities and communities, the project integrates educational objectives with addressing community needs to improve local residents’ quality of life and enhance their capacity and potential, while also providing valuable opportunities for students to gain a deeper understanding of sustainable development issues and to develop intercultural sensitivity. This in turn fosters responsible global citizenship and encourages educational institutions to demonstrate a greater commitment to social responsibility and sustainable development.

The Reimagine Education Awards are a global contest co-organised by Quacquarelli Symonds, compiler of the QS World University Rankings, and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Known as the Oscars in the education sector, the Awards aim to reward institutions of higher education that have created and implemented outstanding new approaches to teaching and learning. This year saw more than 1,300 applications from all over the world. PolyU had a total of eight teams shortlisted in different categories, affirming the University’s continuing efforts to foster innovation in education.

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