HKUST Annual Report 2018-19

13 HKUST DEVELOPING A GLOBAL MIND-SET Around 950 students benefited from the University’s exchange program during the year, studying at partner institutions around the world. Credit-bearing study abroad summer programs, offered together with partner universities, brought additional opportunities to experience other cultural and social environments. Around 450 students participated in programs held at leading universities overseas, including Oxford University, Cambridge University, Princeton University, and Stanford University. Locations for other summer programs encompassed Austria, Brunei, Estonia, and Mainland China, among others. A group of HKUST students undertook a 10-day study tour to the Middle East in summer 2018, where they visited Israel, the world’s start-up nation champion. A credit-bearing study trip to Brazil in January 2019 also gave 32 Global Business students the chance to study the business challenges facing Brazilian companies. TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY EDUCATION Experiential and Blended Learning During 2018-19, 28 blended learning undergraduate courses were approved and another 12 courses verified for delivery using experiential learning. Leaders of experiential learning projects funded by the University’s teaching development grants saw conference papers published on their respective subjects in 2019, including “Teaching Science Using Innovative Teaching Tools” in the European Journal of Social and Behavioural Sciences and “Entrepreneurship 1001: Building Your Own Future”, ECSB Entrepreneurship Education Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden. The School of Engineering also announced that it planned to turn “experiential learning” into compulsory courses for its 800 Year 1 undergraduate students. Massive Open Online Courses The University continues to set the pace in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). By 2018-19, 55 MOOCs had been offered on either the Coursera or edX platforms, attracting over 1.7 million enrollments. Nine more courses were under development. Specializations launched over the year included a series of four on “Full-Stack Web Development with React” in July 2018 (10,000 enrollments) and four MOOCs on “FinTech: Finance Industry Transformation and Regulation” in November 2018 (1,400 enrollments). In September 2018, HKUST signed an agreement with Coursera to pilot the “Coursera for Partners” portal at the University for a year. HKUST was the one of two non-US partners to join this pilot program. It offers four specializations and 40 individual courses and has attracted over 1,100 HKUST members and more than 2,000 course enrollments. Service Learning Civic awareness and self-motivation to serve are integral parts of student education at HKUST, with HKUST Connect, under theDeanof Students’ Office, spearheading such efforts. Among the platform’s wide-ranging initiatives, an HKUST student completed a one-year traineeship program with the International Committee of the Red Cross at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. This opportunity, exclusive to HKUST, enabled the student to gain valuable fieldwork experience in humanitarian aid. In further service learning activities, HKUST Connect collaborated with 65 community partners, engaging 2,230 students in 135 projects over the year. These included one local workcamp and eight service-learning trips to Mainland China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal, and the US. HKUST Service Learning Day was renamed HKUST Global Days of Changemaking to mobilize all HKUST members, including those living or studying overseas, to take action to solve social problems in their communities in support of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In April 2019, over 850 students, faculty members, staff and alumni took part in 47 service projects in connection with the changemaking days and pledged to support the SDGs. The University Student Sponsorship Program in Wildlife Conservation continued in 2018-19, with School of Science students fully sponsored to travel overseas to gain first-hand research experience while contributing to wildlife conservation at the same time. The program is run in collaboration with the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation Hong Kong. HOLISTIC UNDERSTANDING Societies and Sports There are over 100 student societies affiliated to the Students’ Union at HKUST, catering to diverse interests including arts and culture, music, martial arts, community service, and academic affairs. The University continued to support student-initiated activities via a range of schemes, including the President’s 1-HKUST Student Life Award (17 projects) and Student Enrichment Activities Fund (61 projects). On the sporting front, more than 570 student athletes took part in 61 sports teams covering 34 sports in 2018- 19. HKUST student athletes won six trophies in five events organized by the University Sports Federation of Hong Kong, China. A total of 27 elite student athletes studied at HKUST on AEF Sports Scholarships in 2018-19.