An animated series was designed by EdUHK scholars to engage primary students in China’s rich history. Made possible by a donation from the Ning Po Residents Association, Animated Chinese History for Curious Minds chronicles the lives of 10 characters from different eras and social strata who helped shape China’s history over the past two millennia, and some of the featured individuals have special relevance to Hong Kong’s past.

By understanding the life and times of these extraordinary people, primary students learn not only historical facts, but also the moral values of righteousness, persistence and empathy. The series is available with Cantonese and Mandarin audio and subtitles, and it is envisaged that the English version will be completed in October.

In April 2018, a University team funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust began developing an animated Chinese language instruction series for lower primary students. The series, entitled Jockey Club From Words to Culture Programme: An Animated Way to Learn Chinese, will incorporate vibrant, fun-filled, interaction-based teaching activities and multimedia materials to enhance Chinese language acquisition for students in the early stage of learning. The EdUHK team is creating an interactive course website, teacher training programmes and lesson plans in tandem with the animated series to develop a comprehensive educational product.

This year’s International Conference on Computational Thinking Education and accompanying Coding Fair marked the second year of the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s CoolThink@JC Initiative, a four-year programme, which aims to empower students to innovate and solve problems using technology they have mastered. The four-day event, held from 14 to 17 June 2017 at EdUHK, drew world-renowned academics, frontline education practitioners, IT professionals, and over 4,000 primary school teachers, students and parents.

The University has taken a leading role in this Computational Thinking Education project to train more than 100 teachers for the benefit of over 16,500 students in Primary 4 to 6 in 32 pilot schools. Plans are afoot to share the curricular materials, which were co-developed by EdUHK and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with all primary schools in Hong Kong.

Thanks to a generous donation from Hongkong Bank Foundation, EdUHK, as a partner with the leading special schools, continued its involvement in a joint initiative to enhance e-learning in special schools. "The Special School School-based Learning Materials Digitization Scheme" aims to improve the learning and teaching in special schools by digitising the curriculum content and making it available on a customised e-learning platform for students, parents and teachers. So far, 40 EdUHK students have designed and developed e-learning materials tailored for SEN students and delivered trial lessons in the participating special schools. About 350 e-books have been completed out of the target of 572 books.

As the 2017 convenor of the Hong Kong Sustainable Campus Consortium (HKSCC), the University implemented the inaugural cross-institutional environmental campaign “UNIfy: Skip the Straw“ in March 2018 by limiting consumption of plastic straws at food outlets on campus. EdUHK also participated in Green Sense’s “No Air-con Night“ in September 2017 and WWF’s “Earth Hour“ in March 2018. The University continued to encourage a “bring your own bottle” (BYOB) culture by installing more water refilling stations around campus.

After successive reductions in energy use from 2011 to 2016, EdUHK took further steps in 2017/18 to reduce its use of energy for air-conditioning and lighting. These included, for example, a 20 per cent increase in air-conditioning plant efficiency by replacing air-cooled chillers with water-cooled chillers and the installation of LED interior and exterior lights to reduce energy consumption.

During the reporting year, EdUHK redirected hundreds of electrical appliances, and computer and office equipment items to local charities and schools. The University also increased efforts to dispose of residual items in an environmentally friendly manner.

An equal opportunities employer, EdUHK received its second consecutive Friendly Employment Award in the Talent-Wise Employment Charter and Inclusive Organisations Recognition Scheme 2017/18. For the 13th year running, the University was named a “Caring Organisation” by the Hong Kong Council for Social Service, a title that acknowledges EdUHK’s sustained efforts to give meaningful employment for people with special needs and for emphasising work-life balance and family-friendly practices.

As a caring organisation, the University is committed to promoting staff wellbeing. A wide range of workshops, interest classes and staff activities, including a health talk on stress and emotion management, a mindfulness-based stress reduction workshop, horticultural therapy, and aromatherapy massage, were organised to promote work-life balance, attracting 1,702 staff members.