PolyU strives to advance teaching and learning innovations and to develop cutting-edge educational technologies for delivering rich, high-quality 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, namely the Global Education Award, at the QS Reimagine Awards 2024. This represents an exceptional PolyU performance, particularly as it is the first Hong Kong institution to receive the overall award.

Interdisciplinary smart solution wins Gold Award and Global Education Award

The interdisciplinary team led by Dr Rodney Chu, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Applied Social Sciences, developed a solution leveraging the synergy between various educational technology solutions to adapt to the learning habits of the new generation of tech-savvy students.

The project “Engage, Empower, Excel: Smart Campus Innovation” received both the Gold Award in the Smart Omnichannel Campus category as well as the Global Education Award. It features several systems including a generative AI chatbot, a Virtual Assistant TIMS (VAT) which learns from course materials and teachers’ teaching styles, and the Artificial Intelligence Review Assessment System (AIReAS) which offers timely feedback on assignments, enabling the continuous improvement of students.

Integrating experiential learning with clinical service project receives Silver Award

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 innovative project HEROCARE (Holistic Empowerment in Radiation Oncology). The project integrates experiential learning with clinical service to help child cancer patients overcome anxiety about undergoing radiotherapy while enhancing students’ learning about compassion, including the use of PolyU’s Hybrid Immersive Virtual Environment (HiVE), known to be the world’s first fully immersive hybrid classroom.

Service-Learning programme garners Silver Award

PolyU’s flagship Service-Learning initiative is an integrated experiential learning pedagogy embedding social responsibility and civic engagement into its undergraduate curriculum. In particular, non-local Service-Learning opportunities enable students to immerse themselves in diverse cultures while applying their knowledge and skills to foster a deeper understanding of the world's interconnectedness and the importance of cross-cultural collaboration. Led by Dr Grace Ngai, Head of the Service-Learning and Leadership Office and Associate Professor of the Department of Computing, the signature project “Habitat Green: A Hong Kong-African Collaboration in Sustainability Education and Action” conducted in Rwanda seeks to promote experiential, community-focused learning and create platforms for teachers and students to collaborate on sustainability initiatives. This project seized a Silver Award in the Sustainability Education Action category.

Known as the Oscars in the education sector, the QS Reimagine Education Awards is a global contest which aims to reward higher education institutions 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 for the final in different categories, affirming the University’s continuing efforts to foster innovation in education.