The project is part of the Design Studio for Year 1 Architecture undergraduate students, which involves the design of a public space culminating in a one-week construction project in Conghua Village in Guangdong, China. Students will work with their studio tutors to design, detail and prepare for consideration of a public pavilion. Students will live on-site in China and together with their tutors, build a small 3mx3m pavilion.

Year 1 students of architecture are able to have the initial experience in actual architecture construction. This means that the students begin with an overall understanding of what architecture involves before building up the core bits of knowledge. In addition, students demonstrate a holistic understanding on the current condition of rural life in China and the social contract of the architecture.

This experiential learning project is associated with Landscape Design Studio 5: Landscape as Infrastructure, a core studio in the Bachelor of Arts in Landscape Studies curriculum. ‘Flooding Bangkok’ provides students the unique opportunity to combine theoretical knowledge of landscape and resource planning with the material realities of infrastructure along the Chao Phraya River in Thailand.

The project incorporates knowledge gained from a distance with the documentation of the physical realities of the data of multiple scales – working from the large scale (entire watershed of the Chao Phraya) to the small scale (personal interaction with various components of the system). Students are equipped with fieldwork skills necessary for practice as landscape architectural professional. In addition, the project facilitates cross-cultural exchange and collaboration with other landscape architecture programmes internationally.

The Mingde Projects have been established by the Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, since 2004. It provides an open platform for nurturing our students to acquire not only hard skills, but also to possess soft skills, such as a sense of social responsibility, by participating in real-world on-going civil engineering projects in remote impoverished regions in China.

In 2012-2013 academic year and onwards, students enrolled in the credit-bearing course CIVL2001 Engineering Design and Communication can choose to participate in the Mingde Projects to fulfill the course requirement. The current project, which is the fourth Mingde Project in the series, is to build a Community Centre in Da Bao Tun, Guangxi Province. Upon completion, the centre will have classrooms, one library, one staff room, one kitchen and an external environmental-friendly toilet. Together with a standard basketball court, the centre will serve as a school building as well as a community centre to host community event during festivals of ethnic minority group.

The project trains future civil engineers to professionally conduct civil engineering projects through synergetic teamwork and to communicate effectively within a multi-disciplinary working environment. In addition, the project facilitates cultural exchange between Hong Kong students and ethnic minorities and allows students to reflect on their social and cultural responsibility as engineers.

In partnership with the Hong Kong Refugee Advice Centre (HKRAC), the Faculty of Law offers the HKU-HKRAC Clinical Legal Education Programme to undergraduate and postgraduate students. The programme provides general advice and legal aid to asylum seekers and refugees in Hong Kong. Students enrolled in the programme have the opportunity to learn both the theory and practice of domestic and international refugee law under the direct supervision of HKRAC and Faculty of Law’s staff.

The project cultivates a pro-bono ethic and long-term commitment to public service among students. It gives students the opportunity to practice their professional skills and ethics and provide service for unmet legal needs in the community. Students also have the opportunity to recognize challenges, creatively identify options, execute their own judgment, and understand the impacts of their decisions.

This is a 6-credit course, which aims to provide an opportunity for students in the Faculty of Business and Economics to gain hands-on consulting project experience while providing a valuable service to the business community.

The project is an experiential learning opportunity for students to develop their innovative and gain hands-on business consulting experience. Students work in groups of five and provide consulting advice to business clients in real-life projects under guidance of the faculty teacher and professional mentors. In addition, the project provides students a practical platform to learn about service leadership for improving their leadership quality and effectiveness.

Student video on Business Consulting Practicum

The project is an experiential learning opportunity for students to gain a unique hands-on experience in field research into behavioural ecology and conservation of free-ranging cetaceans. It provides students with a fundamental knowledge, skills, and the appreciation of what it takes to design, implement, and effectively run field studies in cetacean ecology, behavior and conservation, and similar studies of other large and mobile marine vertebrates.

Students will be participating in on-going field-based research activities at Bohol Sea, The Phillippines, which provide students with the actual experience to nurturing and developing research skills. In addition, the project develops students’ greater understandings of behavioural and/or evolutionary pattern and how individual focused research advances science at large.

The project is conducted in a wildlife sanctuary in Sabah, Malaysia, where students will be exposed to ‘research-in-making’ with first-hand and hands-on participation in field behavioural studies, with all the excitement it generates and all the demanding challenges it brings along, and with the critically important ‘day-to-day logistics’ of designing, conducting, and successfully completing field studies of animal behavior and behavioural ecology.

Students will be participating in on-going field-based research activities at The Danau Girang Field Centre, a collaborative research and training facility managed by Cardiff University. Students will gain actual experience to nurturing and developing research skills and develop greater understanding of behavioural and/or evolutionary pattern and how individual focused research advances science at large.