Six student projects shine at CLASS DEC Competition

Six student projects were honoured for their achievements in discovery and innovation at a presentation ceremony on 15 May for the first College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) Discovery-enriched Curriculum (DEC) Competition.

Ms Ada Wong Ying-kay, JP, Founder and Chief Executive, Hong Kong Institute of Contemporary Culture; Supervisor, HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity; Convenor, Make A Difference; and Convenor, The Good Lab; Professor Way Kuo, CityU President; Professor Arthur Ellis, CityU Provost; Professor Gary Feng Gang, CityU Associate Provost (Academic Planning and Undergraduate Education); and Professor Zang Xiaowei, Dean of CLASS, officiated at the ceremony.

“Looking at the experiences and projects, DEC is really great. CityU is doing pioneering things in integrating doing and action into the actual learning experience,” said Ms Wong.

She also shared her mission in encouraging entrepreneurial ventures and projects that bring new solutions to social problems by building the Good Lab, a co-working space for fostering cross-sector collaborations and social change.

“We are very pleased that CLASS takes the lead to encourage students to devote effort and energy into the DEC. At the University level, we have just finished our five-year strategic plan in which our goal is to deepen DEC,” said Professor Kuo.

“We want our students to have international exposure and to participate in the learning process. We also want them to make contributions in the learning process, which is the spirit of the DEC,” he continued.

Professor Zang said the goal of the competition was to enable students to develop their learning potential and motivation through the DEC, not only in their studies at CityU but also in lifelong learning.

This year 50 entries were submitted by the students and he hoped more entries would be received in the next year. The award-winning projects were:

●   From eyes to eyes: An application of the eye-tracking laboratory;

●   Social work practicum: Development of a practice protocol in working with a person with mental illness;

●   Museum, a theatre production;

●   A mobile phone game design – Pet Ba Ma;

●   Treebank visualisation tool (a database of sentences annotated with syntactic information); and

●   Tiny effort, lovely world (a study of Chinese public welfare on Weibo).