HKU-CAES-Annual-Report_2021-22

The 2021-2022 academic year was another productive one for us in CAES. It was crucial in achieving a strategic and financial plan for the next three years. The year kicked off with a Retreat day in December 2021 where the new three-year (2022-2025) strategic and financial plan was developed. For the next three years, CAES is committed to: (i) striking a clear balance between cost-effectiveness and a high-quality standard in all our provisions, (ii) offering quality teaching, a rewarding learning experience and solid support to our students, (iii) becoming a more sustainable Centre through our revenue-generating activities, (iv) assisting our staff in their personal and professional development through a new mentoring system, and (v) developing our scholarship-informed teaching culture. Throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, CAES continued to provide language support to develop language and literacy skills among all UGC-funded students across nine faculties. The quality of our teaching is reflected in our students’ achievements and the excellent feedback we have received. CAES1000 enrolled 2,276 students while English-in-the- Discipline Courses enrolled 3,730 students throughout the two academic semesters. Other than regular language enhancement courses, our Communication Support Services provided a variety of services to 5,593 UGC- funded students deploying UGC-funded undergraduate and postgraduate students as peer consultants to help them develop their communication skills. In the next academic year, the Centre will explore the possibility of offering this support to postgraduate students across HKU. Other than the UGC-funded courses provided, CAES is strongly committed to projects in collaboration with other stakeholders. CAES staff continue to lead the Communication-intensive Course (CiC) project in collaboration with the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) and the Common Core Office. So far, 156 courses have been badged. In 2021-2022, 11,568 students across the University took a CI-badged course. The 2021-2022 Symposium was held online with Dr. Anne Gaffney as the featured speaker. Introduction This year, we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics (MAAL) programme. In order to cater for the increasing demand, we doubled the cohort size to 60 without compromising the quality of our provision. Students expressed high satisfaction during the two student-staff consultative committee meetings, highlighting the rich and practical offerings of the programme, and professionalism of our teachers. The programme was highly praised by our external examiner in terms of the curriculum structure, quality of teaching, support provided to students and quality of our graduates. Looking ahead, we will continue to strengthen this provision and pilot a new way of delivering our teaching along with a further expansion of our cohort size next year to increase our revenue stream. Our Specially-funded English Courses (SFEC) continue to offer a variety of courses to improve students’ skills in academic English literacy, dissertation writing and use of specialised terminology and professional presentations. Twenty-seven courses were offered to 1,553 participants including university staff of different ranks as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students across different faculties. Our Summer Programme consisted of 7 courses and 397 students were enrolled in the 17 online classes in the summer. With the continued popularity of our Summer Programme, we hope to offer these courses again next summer through face-to-face teaching. With the support of a Virtual Teaching and Learning grant, a new undergraduate course (CAES2004 Communication and Community Engagement through Podcasting) was launched. In addition, new forms of staff-student partnerships were pioneered with the employment of students who provided peer support in classes, helped courses adapt to new technology and produced podcasts and educational videos. CAES has secured funding for two new initiatives: the development of an online pre-sessional communication module; the expansion of our current CiC project and the development of a distinguished communication award. CAES aims to further develop and foster a scholarly- informed teaching culture that is beneficial to our staff in terms of professional development and to our students and partners. Scholarly activities in CAES generate different forms of dissemination, engagement, innovation and impact on our services and on local and academic communities. A variety of initiatives have been developed to support scholarship across three main thematic areas: (1) assessment practices, (2) classroom pedagogy, and (3)materials development. A new scholarship website was launched in September 2022. The new mentoring programme is continuing to promote professional development to enhance personal well-being and to foster a learning culture for everyone in our Centre. CAES has organised a series of events for staff throughout the year. Our professional development programme for staff is designed to strengthen teaching skills and deepen subject knowledge. In our Centre, there are regular times across the semesters where teachers can share their practices with colleagues in various teacher learning communities. Members of CAES had a productive year in terms of presentations and publications in their respective areas of interest. A strategic plan for our journal, Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics (AJAL), has been developed with the Centre’s support. AJAL continues to provide quality peer-reviewed publications related to English language use and practice in the region. CAES is currently developing a new EAP teacher training programme. Two new PhD students have been enrolled during this academic year. One of them received the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship. CAES will continue to be a locally and internationally recognisedcentre for its teaching, engagement, innovation and scholarship in English language education. Our colleagues have shown once again their commitment and hard work throughout the year to ensure that CAES continues to accomplish all its objectives. The General Office continues to provide its support to the highest standard without which the Centre would not be able to achieve all its successes. I would like to thank them for that. Dr. Alessandro Benati Director September 2022 INTRODUCTION ANNUAL REPORT Centre for Applied English Studies 02 01