2023 UGC Teaching Award commends teaching excellence
The University Grants Committee (UGC) held a presentation ceremony for the 2023 UGC Teaching Award today (September 27) to honour academics from the UGC-funded universities for their outstanding teaching performances and achievements, as well as their leadership and scholarly contributions to teaching and learning within and outside their campuses.
Through a rigorous process, the Award Selection Panel selected the following three recipients from among around 20 outstanding nominees for the Award:
General Faculty Members
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Mr David Lorin Bishop (Associate Professor of Teaching, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong)
Early Career Faculty Members
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Professor Tsui Lik-hang (Assistant Professor, Department of Chinese and History, City University of Hong Kong)
Collaborative Teams
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Internationalisation at Home Team of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, led by Professor Engle Angela Chan (Interim Head and Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences), with Dr Arkers Wong Kwan-ching (Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences), Mr Timothy Lai Kam-hung (Associate Professor of Practice, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences), Dr Betty Chung Pui-man (Assistant Professor of Practice, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences) and Dr Doris Leung Yuet-lan (Adjunct Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences) as team members.
The citations of the awardees are at Annex.
The Chairman of the UGC, Mr Tim Lui, congratulated the awardees, finalists and nominees on their accomplishments, and thanked the UGC-funded universities for their support for the UGC Teaching Award. He said, "This year's awardees have demonstrated unwavering dedication to and passion for purposeful teaching, which embodies the spirit of nurturing our students with integrity and passing on the torch of knowledge to future generations.
"The UGC embraces the importance of teaching and learning as the core mission of our higher education. We are committed to working closely with the universities in giving our students the best learning experience," he added.
The Chair of the 2023 UGC Teaching Award Selection Panel, Mr Philip Tsai, a member of the UGC, remarked, "We were deeply impressed by the awardees' commitment to excellence in teaching and learning. Mr David Lorin Bishop's experiential learning courses across multiple disciplines helps students gain insights into the intricacies of real-world problems. Professor Tsui Lik-hang's innovative digital learning in history education empowers students to further their understanding of history with technologies and become reflective researchers. The Internationalisation at Home Team has gone beyond conventional clinical practices to develop their students' cultural awareness and global competence."
The presentation ceremony was attended by UGC members, Council chairmen and senior management of the UGC-funded universities, as well as nominees for the Award.
The UGC has also produced a series of short video clips to promote best practices by showcasing the teaching approach of the 2023 UGC Teaching Award recipients. The clips, together with the selection criteria and the composition of the Selection Panel, as well as the list of other finalists, are available on the UGC website www.ugc.edu.hk/eng/ugc/activity/ugc_teaching_award/result.html.
Annex
2023 UGC Teaching Award Citations
Mr David Lorin Bishop, The University of Hong Kong (HKU)
Mr David Bishop has demonstrated his exceptional teaching, innovation, and dedication to student success throughout his academic career. His unique teaching style that combines intellectual curiosity, energy, drive, and dedication has created exciting and rewarding learning opportunities for students. His commitment to actively engage in real-world problem-solving and decision-making has led to the development of a variety of experiential learning courses across multiple disciplines, providing students with the opportunity to grapple intellectually with the intricacies of real-world business and legal problems. Mr Bishop is also able to convey complex ideas in an easily understandable way, constantly seeking innovative teaching methods to provide students with a unique perspective on the subject matter.
Beyond his exemplary teaching, Mr Bishop is also a leader in his field, with noteworthy commitment to service. He has founded and co-founded various local and international award-winning charitable foundations and social enterprises, many of which are active today and support HKU student learning. One of the notable examples is Soup Cycling, the first social enterprise founded by him in 2012 and co-run by his students, which has expanded across Southeast Asia to promote environmental protection, community empowerment and equitable hygiene. Mr Bishop's highly successful experiential learning courses provide students with a supportive framework for developing empathy and leadership to cultivate social responsibility in a complex world. As a champion of business and legal education, Mr Bishop's dedication to innovative teaching has resulted in outstanding student success both inside and outside classroom, making him a role model for his colleagues and students alike.
Professor Tsui Lik-hang, City University of Hong Kong
Professor Tsui is an outstanding educator recognised for pioneering innovative digital learning in history education. Amidst challenges of the pandemic, he overcame traditional teaching limitations through his expertise in digital humanities. He emphasises engaging with original historical texts within an integrated learning environment that fosters active understanding of historical issues and connections to students' contexts. His adept contribution to and use of advanced digital tools connects students, creating a dynamic interactive experience. Professor Tsui's student-centred teaching approach also integrates datasets and tools for mapping, timelines, text annotation and digital biographies. This challenges the cliches, rethinks analytical frameworks, and spurs data-driven debates, empowering students to reshape their understanding of history and become reflective researchers.
As an exceptional educator and academic leader, Professor Tsui's contribution to history and digital humanities education have earned him awards and impacting students beyond the university. Supported by the Education Bureau, he led colleagues to develop a glossary for teaching Chinese history to non-Chinese speaking students in Hong Kong. He is also developing resources that bolster information literacy and historical reasoning in an age of artificial intelligence (AI) by integrating generative AI technologies such as chatbots into his students' learning, preparing students to recognise the respective strengths of humans and machines.
Professor Tsui's innovative approaches cultivate understanding across communities, and empower the next generation with not only crucial historical knowledge, but also digital literacy and reasoning skills. He shows how history education should be shaped and revitalised through technology.
The Internationalisation at Home Team, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU)
The Internationalisation at Home (IaH) Team from PolyU is led by Professor Engle Angela Chan, with Dr Arkers Wong Kwan-ching, Mr Timothy Lai Kam-hung, Dr Betty Chung Pui-man and Dr Doris Leung Yuet-lan as team members.
This dedicated team shares a common vision of providing quality training and learning experiences to nursing students. The team has pioneered the adoption of an IaH approach before the COVID pandemic back in 2015. To prepare nursing students for their profession in the complex multi-cultural context of Hong Kong, the team has been working closely with overseas institutions, including universities from Sweden and Australia, to design a series of online student-led group activities as an alternative to the 'overseas exchange' learning experience. This new education model has successfully gone beyond conventional clinical practices to developing their students' cultural awareness and global competence, thereby creating a long-lasting impact and preparing them for the uncertainties in the field.
In recent years, the team proactively liaises with other disciplines and institutions worldwide for collaboration to expand the scope of impact. The team members have also actively contributed to the nursing field by sharing new knowledge through seminars, conference presentations and publications.
