2023-24 HKU Teaching and Learning Fellows

Biography
Nicole Tavares (FHEA) is a Senior Lecturer in the academic unit of Language and Literacy Education at the Faculty of Education and the Teaching SIG leader in her unit. Her expertise is in English language teaching (ELT) methodology, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), and teacher language awareness. She teaches related courses on the BA&BEd, PGDE, MEd and MA programmes and has been the MA(TESOL) Programme Director since 2020.
Nicole sees students at the heart of her teaching and is dedicated to bringing out the best in every learner. She is acknowledged for her unique design of collaborative activities that create space for all students’ voices to be heard. She is honoured to have received multiple teaching awards since she joined the University in 2001, notably the HKU Teaching Innovation Award (2020), her Faculty’s Emergency Remote Teaching Award (2020) and the HKU Outstanding Teaching Award (2015). She warmly welcomes colleagues to her classes and enjoys professional dialogues with them as she shares how her research into her own teaching has informed her evolving novel practices.
Nicole’s research interests range from ELT and CLIL to online teaching and learning, technology-enhanced ELT good practices, E-learning platforms and technological tools in promoting teacher professional development, 21st Century Skills development, and creative use of digital feedback. Two of Nicole’s recent publications are ‘Empowering English Teachers to be Grammar ‘Experts’ and Coursebook Analysts via Perusall’ and ‘Maximising Student Voice’. Her work has been published in Computers & Education, the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, the RELC Journal and others.
Over these years, Nicole has passionately supported TALIC in various capacities, including mentoring colleagues in their preparation for AdvanceHE fellowship applications, reviewing the applications, mentoring colleagues on the Post-Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice programme, speaking in seminars, and facilitating workshops.
As an HKU Teaching & Learning Fellow for the second year, Nicole is keen on working closely with TALIC to maintain the ongoing support she has been offering to colleagues who are interested in exploring how Perusall, a collaborative online annotation platform, may be used in teaching in both synchronous and asynchronous ways. Dedicated to reflective practice in teacher education, she initiated post-lesson joint reflection sessions with the teachers who opened up their classrooms at the 4th Teaching and Learning Festival – an exercise that both the observed and observers responded very positively to. She hopes to continue this practice at the 2024 Festival. As part of a new initiative, in 2012, she began piloting Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects with university teachers in the United Kingdom. Fascinated to have witnessed the impact of COIL on students’ pedagogic, linguistic, intellectual and personal growth, she wishes to learn more about the effective implementation of COIL with her Fellow buddies, TALIC experts and collaborators at partnering universities.

Project Topics
Internationalising Teacher Education through Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL): Opportunities, Challenges and Direction Ahead

Project Aims
With Student Learning as the Focus – Professional and Pedagogic Gains Nicole is excited about the potential opportunities of working closely with like-minded colleagues across the University and beyond to examine how COIL modules can be designed to sharpen student(-teacher)s’ intercultural awareness, enhance their collaboration and communication skills and develop their learner autonomy. This targets empowering prospective teachers to be influential team players at school as they learn to celebrate diversity, welcome multiple perspectives, appreciate individual strengths and embrace challenges in multicultural environments.
Nicole also looks forward to actively seeking ways to widen students’ repertoire of ELT methodological practices adopted worldwide, broaden their scope of different classroom teaching skills, and advance their techniques in tailoring instructional materials to suit the needs of learners from diverse backgrounds. By identifying factors conducive to learning gains, she aims to contribute to COIL research findings and apply this new learning to curriculum development in and beyond her Faculty for richer student learning experiences.

In Higher Education
On the institutional level, Nicole is eager to reach out to a larger teaching community in higher education as she disseminates good practices learned about implementing COIL. She aspires to participate in universities’ broader education/global agenda to internationalise higher education programmes using the latest digital technology. With a deepened understanding of students’ perceptions of and readiness for COIL, as well as their learning processes, challenges and gains, her goal is to develop a set of guiding principles for designing COIL programmes not only in teacher education but across all other disciplines.

On a Personal Note
Through learning with and from colleagues in and out of HKU, Nicole is confident that she will gain new and renewed insights into how the course content of the modules she teaches can be enriched, her teaching approaches further diversified, and her innovations more impactful.