President's Awards

Individual Award

Dr Savio WONG Wai-ho
黃蔚皓博士
Associate Professor
Department of Special Education and Counselling

Dr Savio Wong is a committed scholar who has excelled in developing a learner-centred environment, provoking student curiosity in the value of knowledge and supporting them in constructing new knowledge.

Dr Wong developed a 3R model consisting of REFLECT, RESEARCH and REVISE to implement his pedagogy and cater to the diverse learning needs of students. He emphasises the importance of on-going reflection, understands students’ needs, expectations and difficulties and integrates their feedback into his teaching. Dr Wong applies innovative approaches to supplement the existing pedagogy. To help students analyse real-world issues with theoretical models, he adopts blended-learning approaches that promote reflective learning in students’ daily lives using an online social networking platform. He supports students’ learning with diverse cognitive strategies that promote better memory formation, such as visual imagery, embodied cognition, mental rehearsal and metacognition. Dr Wong has introduced new instruction strategies (flipped classroom) to his Honours Project courses to enhance learning efficiency. By emphasising the importance of critically analysing and evaluating research findings, he equips students with generic analytical skills and critical thinking.

Dr Wong has also demonstrated leadership in Learning and Teaching. As the Chair of the Departmental Learning and Teaching Committee, he led the Committee and implemented a number of initiatives promoting high-quality learning and teaching, including the establishment of a Teaching Development Seed Fund and a course evaluation policy within the department. He has also made significant contributions to programme and course development by taking part in two programme development teams and developing new courses grounded in the latest research and knowledge in psychology and neuroscience. Dr Wong has also developed an out-of-classroom learning programme, the Special School Placement Scheme, for Bachelor of Education students to co-teach with teachers in special schools. He also promotes effective teaching practice within the Institute and in collaboration with local and overseas institutions through various seminars and talks.

Students value Dr Wong’s ability to inspire their learning and value reflection. His excellent classroom acumen is reflected in his high Student Evaluation of Teaching scores and very positive student feedback on course materials and pedagogical strategies in his taught courses. He was awarded the Faculty Teaching Award (Certificate of Merit) in 2013/14.