Dr. Li Yuanxi has clearly demonstrated her credentials as a highly versatile and committed teacher since joining the Department of Computer Science in 2014. She has tirelessly brought innovative pedagogies and internationalised perspectives to benefit student learning in the classroom and in programme development.

While teaching at General Education (GE), undergraduate or Master of Science (MSc) levels, Dr. Li always delivers in an innovative style of teaching that is most suitable for student needs, from blended learning, flipped classroom, to service learning. She has given eight invited talks to share teaching and learning pedagogies in and outside of HKBU.

To keep fully up to date with the emerging trends in technology, Dr. Li has adopted Gathertown (Metaverse) to complement her teaching. In the simulated campus that is created according to learning needs, students can actively discuss with each other in designated areas. Furthermore, she uses the Mural, which not only allows students to actively share their opinions among global peers across time zones online by using virtual post-it notes, but also provides her the means of monitoring a student’s project progress in real time.

With an emphasis on the fundamental importance of applying knowledge and skills to tackle real-world issues, Dr. Li regularly organises industry-student co-creation workshops, field trips, and guest talks. She has set an assessment task for students to design smart and sustainable city solutions for Hong Kong, which helped students hone their information technology (IT) knowledge and design thinking skills, while testing their understanding of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Dr. Li also stresses the importance of an international perspective. In her course materials, she often compares the standards that apply in different parts of the world, such as the Service Level Agreement of Amazon Web Services and Alibaba Cloud, or data privacy regulations in the European Union and Hong Kong.

Over the years, Dr. Li has forged partnerships with 17 universities worldwide and organised 10 global learning events hosted by HKBU, involving more than 600 students from over 30 countries and regions. These also earned her international teaching and learning awards, including the 2020 Learning Technologist of the Year Award (Highly Commended Team Award), the 2020 QS Reimagine Education Conference and Awards 2020 (Finalist of E-Leaning Innovators), and the 6th e-Learning Excellence Awards in the European Conference on e-Learning (Merit Award).

Serving as Associate Director of two MSc programmes, Dr. Li has constantly enhanced and innovated the curriculum with new courses covering the latest knowledge, forged new global alliances, and promoted the programmes internationally. These efforts have made the MSc programmes highly successful, with more than 1,500 applicants and over 350 intakes each year. She has also made outstanding contributions to the design of several new General Education courses.

Dr. Li has proven herself an invaluable asset to her department with significant achievements in teaching, internationalisation and programme administration. Hence the Selection Committee has found her a truly worthy recipient of the President’s Award for Outstanding Performance in Individual Teaching.