TEACHING AND LEARNING 21 20 HKU ANNUAL REPORT 2022 A team led by two Faculty of Education students won the 2022 Pitching Contest for Engineering Undergraduates and InnoHub members organised by the Faculty of Engineering’s Innovation Academy, underscoring the growing interdisciplinarity of tech innovation at HKU. The crossover project, MotOral, is a mobile application targeting swallowing disorders among older adults. The app helps speech therapists provide prevention measures for at-risk patients, such as exercises to strengthen oral motor muscles, face-tracking technologies to monitor muscle movement, and visual feedback. The project was led by Lesley Lee Hoi In and Rachel Yue Hang Chi, both Year 4 students in the Bachelor of Science The University is in the process of integrating research more systematically into the undergraduate curriculum. In the meantime, individual students and teachers are demonstrating the value of this goal. Dr Gilad Feldman of the Department of Psychology requires all his students – not just star pupils – to produce research that contributes to academia. From 2018 to 2022, they conducted 80 replications and extensions of classic findings in social psychology and judgment and decision-making, which are important to uphold the credibility of the original findings. So far 28 have been published in academic journals. While the students have learned about the rigours of research, Dr Feldman has also gained insights. “My work with students has informed my understanding of open science. I encouraged them to challenge me to do better and they have motivated me to re-examine all that I’ve learned in my academic training,” he said. Undergraduate research can also send students in pursuit of research careers. Lam Suet Ying graduated in 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts double major in linguistics and computer science and EDUCATION STUDENTS WIN TECH CONTEST UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH SHOWS RESULTS MotOral is a mobile application that assists speech therapists in providing preventive measures of swallowing disorders for at-risk older adults. Students are encouraged to apply new technology to find solutions, whatever their discipline, and to pursue research to deepen their knowledge and understanding. THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX in Speech-Language Pathology. Rachel was already a member of InnoHub – a platform where students from all 10 faculties can collaborate on new innovations – when the two friends decided to test their ideas in the Pitching Contest. They also sought input from friends in engineering, business and law to gain perspectives from outside speech-language pathology on how to improve their app, but the leadership – and pitching – were down to the efforts of Lesley and Rachel. “This was our first-ever pitching contest and we were nervous and practised more than 30 times to ensure our pitch went smoothly. We were so excited and surprised to win the contest even though we were not engineering students,” they said. The pair received a HK$1,200 cash prize and also won the Best Presenters Award. They are now eligible to apply for funding from the Tam Wing Fan Innovation Fund and Philomathia Foundation Innovation Fund to develop their project further. “We are continuously making modifications and seeking funding to improve MotOral’s functions. This kind of support is important for turning student ideas into a self-sustaining business,” they said. moved directly into a PhD programme at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earlier collaborated on several research studies with Dr Heeju Hwang in the Department of Linguistics, including a transdisciplinary study on pronoun production in Mandarin Chinese that was published in Cognitive Science this year with Suet Ying as the lead author. The study was funded by the Common Core Transdisciplinary Undergraduate Research Fund. “I wanted to learn what doing research is like so I could decide whether I wanted to pursue further study in this field and I found myself really enjoying it. This drove me to apply for PhD programmes,” she said. Dr Hwang said Suet Ying had contributed to knowledge about general theories of referential communications across languages. “This kind of research can raise students’ awareness about linguistic and cultural diversity and help foster an inclusive environment,” she said. Dr Heeju Hwang and Bachelor of Arts student Lam Suet Ying (on screen) have meetings and perform research studies online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lesley (left) and Rachel (centre) showcasing MotOral in the Engineering Inno Show.
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