The Department is pleased to announce that the following Teaching Assistants/ Demonstrators have been chosen as recipients of the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award in 2023/24 Term 1: (Name in alphabetical order)
Lee Man Lung (CHEM1070A) & Mao Xiaofeng (CHEM3810)
This award is given each semester to Teaching Assistants/Demonstrators that demonstrates exceptional performance and devotion to duty while acting on behalf of the department. It is a prestigious honour that serves to recognise the best of the best within our ranks. The awardees’ teaching performance, contribution to Department and character are considered during the selection process. Each awardee will receive a $1,000 prize.
We are grateful to have our Department Chairman, Prof. Kwong Fuk-yee, to present the certificates and awards to the awardees.
What’s more, we are happy to have Eric and Xiaofeng to share with us their wholehearted feelings of receiving this achievement 🙂
Sharing from Lee Man Lung (Responsible course: CHEM1070A)
I am grateful for receiving outstanding graduate teaching assistant awards in Term 1. Being a teaching assistant for a 250-people class is a challenging and rewarding job for me and the rest of the TAs in the course. Thankfully, all of the TAs are cooperative and proactive to help students solve their problems in Chemistry. It is also important to mention that we are lucky to have tool like Kahoot, which is funded by the department, to assist in our tutorial sessions. Using Kahoot can not only make the tutorial more interactive, but also facilitate the process of delivering chemistry knowledge. It is such a rare and precious experience for me to conduct a tutorial with 250 people learn how to deal with a large-scale class.
Sharing from Mao Xiaofeng (Responsible course: CHEM3810)
It’s my great pleasure to be nominated and receive this honor. As a chemistry laboratory demonstrator, we aim to guide students to comprehend ‘what? why? and how?’ 1) What are our learning goals? What experimental techniques are to be used and what is the purpose of each operation? What is the connection between designed operations and chemical principles? 2) Why can’t some operations be omitted or replaced? Why do some unexpected experimental observations occur? 3) How to deal with some abnormal experimental phenomena? How to make some reasonable improvements to the experiment manual? I was lucky enough to meet many motivated and curious students, and we tried to think critically while getting along with each other. Learning is like research, all theories and techniques are built on basic facts.
Hearty congratulations to Eric and Xiaofeng, and many thanks to all nominators and our selection panels!