Hong Kong Baptist University’s teaching and learning projects win international recognition

Two innovative teaching and learning projects led by HKBU won the Highly Commended Team Award of the Learning Technologist of the Year Awards 2020. Presented by the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) in the UK, the prize was awarded to the projects, in recognition of their excellent practices and outstanding achievements in the learning technology field. 

The award-winning projects are “Global Learning at Home”, which was led by Dr Kristen Li of the Department of Computer Science, and Dr Paolo Mengoni and Dr Zhang Xinzhi of the Department of Journalism; and “CCGame”, which was led by the Centre for Holistic Teaching and Learning in collaboration with teachers at HKBU, CityU, CUHK and PolyU.

The project team of Global Learning at Home, in collaboration with more than ten universities in Europe, Asia and the US, organised the Global Students Virtual Hackathon, one of the first international student virtual hackathons in Hong Kong. During the 48-hour online challenge, more than 110 students from 16 countries and regions formed diversified teams and developed solutions to address the COVID-19 crisis and plan ahead. The teams were guided by facilitators and mentors worldwide. More details of the project are available at https://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/designworkshop/2020virtualhack.

CCGame is a technology-facilitated learning and teaching project aiming to increase students’ capacity to address global challenges by working in diverse teams in online settings. A signature activity of the project is the International eTournament, which is one of the first online tournaments in the world with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as the theme. About 5,300 students from 46 countries/regions had been involved in the activities implemented by the team since 2017. The project also received the Silver Award in eLearning at the Reimagine Education Awards organised by Quacquarelli Symonds in 2020 and the Silver Award in the Community Outreach Award category of the eLearning Forum Asia in 2019. More details of the project are available at http://ccgame.hkbu.edu.hk.