June 25, 2015
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) announced the winners of the 3rd Annual Teaching Prizes last week. These awards recognise teaching excellence and innovation and the dedication of the teaching Faculty at XJTLU.
Organised by XJTLU’s Academic Enhancement Centre (AEC), the categories of the Teaching Prizes are: Outstanding Teacher; Innovative Teaching Practices and Outstanding Teaching Assistant/Laboratory Technician.
Sijing Meng and Zhongkai Huang from the Department of Biological Sciences won the ‘Outstanding Teaching Assistant/Laboratory Teaching Technician’ award, while Dr Theodoros Dounas from the Department of Architecture was awarded the ‘Innovative Teaching Practices’ prize. The ‘Outstanding Teacher’ award was won by Dr Haining Liang from the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.
Dr Stuart Perrin, Dean of Learning and Teaching at XJTLU and Director of the Language Centre first gave a brief introduction to the Annual Teaching Prizes saying, “It is particularly important for a young university to conduct innovative teaching practices. This year is the 3rd Annual Teaching Prize and we gather here to congratulate staff who have devoted themselves to innovative practices over the last year.”
Dr Theodoros Dounas who won the ‘Innovative Teaching Practices’ prize said of his award, “Our project ‘Digital sketching as a generative system - Developing hybrid media logs in the design studio’ aims at solving students’ problems while they are finishing their tasks. “This system combines the feedback of students and how to arrange their assignments together. Some problems in teaching are reflected by student feedback, which has enabled me to improve my teaching.”
The ‘Highly Commended Innovative Teaching Practices’ was awarded to Ms Karen O’Toole from the Language Centre. She emphasised that the Language Centre provides the best language service for all students by setting up a special enquiry site. As students can seek help for any language problems at any time, it is helpful for Year 1 and Year 2 students to adapt to the English teaching environment at XJTLU and improve their English language skills.
“XJTLU has many teaching resources and the staff here are excellent. We have academic exchanges with each other, which provides me much help in my teaching. I can get various teaching experiences from students who have different backgrounds, and constantly develop innovative teaching model”, said Dr Haining Liang who received the ‘Outstanding Teacher’ prize this year.
He believes that it is more important to gain recognition rather than an award. What makes him delighted is his students’ participation in the vote. “This is an encouragement from students which makes me feel my teaching is really helpful for them. I will keep exploring innovative teaching models in the future to help students study better.”
June 25, 2015