PolyU wins two Silvers and one Bronze in QS Reimagine Education Awards 2025

Placing great emphasis on advancing teaching and learning innovation, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) is committed to enhancing student engagement and learning outcomes through the use of cutting-edge educational technologies. Three PolyU teams have integrated generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and metaverse technologies into their teaching initiatives, winning two Silver Awards and one Bronze Award at the QS Reimagine Education Awards 2025 — the highest number of awards among Hong Kong universities.

A teaching team led by Dr Richard LUI, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Computing, has developed GPTutor, a GenAI-powered learning platform, to strength AI literacy and essential workplace skills among students from diverse disciplines. Their project, “AI Literacy to Workplace Excellence: Transforming Education for Next-Generation Professionals”, received a Silver Award in the AI in Education by Higher Education Institutions category.

GPTutor offers a range of self‑directed learning support to help students explore course content and consolidate their learning, including an AI chatbot that answers students’ questions about lecture materials, and the automatic generation of personalised revision questions and quizzes. In GPTutor, instructors can create three-dimensional avatars that enable students to practise practical application skills needed in real‑world scenarios through simulated interaction. GPTutor has been integrated in courses in multiple disciplines, with more than 3,000 PolyU students using this platform to support their learning last academic year. The team also tailored AI‑enhanced experiential learning activities for students from over 20 programmes to bridge online learning with real-world AI applications.

Prof. Shirley NGAI, Associate Head and Associate Professor of the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences and her team won a Sliver Award in the Nurturing Employability category with the project “Standardised Programme for Advancing Clinical Education” (SPACE). The project provides students with authentic clinical simulations to facilitate their transition from classroom learning to clinical placements, reshaping traditional physiotherapy education.

As a pre‑clinical training framework, SPACE is designed for senior physiotherapy students. It immerses students in lifelike clinical settings where they assess, diagnose and treat highly trained standardised patients while also navigating workplace challenges such as hierarchical dynamics. All scenarios are co-designed with local industry experts to reflect real-world demands; GenAI is also employed to increase case diversity. After each session, teaching faculty provide immediate feedback to further enrich learning outcomes. The framework comprehensively enhances students’ clinical competency, decision-making skills and adaptability, equipping them with stronger professional proficiency and employability.

Winning a Bronze Award in the Nurturing Values and Ethics category, the project “vCare: A Multiplayer Metaverse Game for Interprofessional Healthcare Education” (vCare) is spearheaded by Dr Kitty CHAN, Associate Professor of Practice of the School of Nursing, and her team. Grounded in self-determination theory, the team has developed a metaverse educational game to foster students’ autonomy, competence and relatedness.

vCare is a multiplayer online role‑playing game in which students navigate customisable virtual clinical environments, solo or collaboratively, on scenario-based missions. Its gamified design features interactive elements such as knowledge checks, leaderboards and peer recognition. Supporting up to 100 participants in small-group game rooms, the game brings together students from different health professions — such as nursing, rehabilitation and radiography — to collaborate in the virtual space, allowing them to understand other professional perspectives, values and ethical stands, learn to resolve team conflicts and build a strong ethical framework. The team is planning enhancements, including the inclusion of real cases, to further foster empathy inclusive and value‑driven healthcare education.

Known as the “Oscars” of the education sector, the QS Reimagine Education Awards honour pioneering pedagogical approaches that improve student learning outcomes and employability. This year, the Awards attracted over 1,650 submissions worldwide, which were rigorously judged by more than 1,300 international experts in the higher education and educational technology sectors, with winners selected across 21 award categories.

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