Teaching

“The purpose of education is to initiate students’ passion and inspire them to think about their purpose of life. If we teach, students will learn; if we let them engage, students will learn, master, and initiate.” — Li-Ta Hsu

Teaching at IPNL spans undergraduate aviation engineering, GNSS-focused subjects, postgraduate research training, and a multi-year research line on GitHub-based pedagogy for engineering education. The throughline is simple: open up students’ vision to a world of open-source and collaboration so they can ride the AI/robotics wave — by cultivating learning-to-learn, problem-solving, and collaboration. Subjects taught consistently rank in the top 10–25 percentile of PolyU e-SFQ ratings since 2017 (averaged eSFQ ~4.2–4.9), and the work has been recognized at department, faculty, university, and UGC levels.

Major Recognition

• 2024 — PolyU Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching — the university’s top individual teaching honor. PolyU news release.
• 2024 — UGC Teaching Award nominee (General Faculty Category) — PolyU sole nominee. The University Grants Committee award is Hong Kong’s most prestigious teaching recognition.
• 2024 — URIS Outstanding Supervision Award — recognizing the mentorship pipeline that carries forward (Louise Zhou, supervised through the URIS programme — the chain extends to Max Lee, then to a new generation).
• 2023 — Outstanding Award in Teaching, Faculty of Engineering, PolyU
• 2020 — Merit Award in Teaching (Individual), Faculty of Engineering, PolyU
• 2020 — Peer Review of Teaching Practice rated EXCELLENT (by Prof. Felix Chan)

GitHub-Based Pedagogy — the signature teaching innovation

The lab’s signature teaching-innovation research thread, and the basis of the 2024 President’s Teaching Award case. It began in 2020 with the HK$960k Online Teaching Development grant, was peer-disseminated at EDC and SUSTech, and culminated in the ICLT 2025 conference paper.

Core idea. GitHub-based pedagogy is the integration of (1) a flipped classroom and (2) project-based learning, delivered through the same professional online code-sharing and project-management platform that industry actually uses. When GitHub workflows — version control, pull requests, issue tracking, code review — become the primary classroom collaboration environment, students build online collaboration, problem-solving, and learning-to-learn (L2L) competencies far more effectively than traditional submission portals. The same skills (finding open-source code, starting a project with online collaborators, jointly coding and reviewing) are exactly what employers and research increasingly demand.

Measured impact (EDC pilot study)

Evaluated with PolyU’s Educational Development Centre via a pre/post study of the Year-1 Freshman Seminar in Engineering cohort. Every targeted learning attribute improved with strong statistical significance:

Source: EDC pilot study, reported in the ICLT 2025 paper below.

Reach across the curriculum

GitHub-based pedagogy spans seven undergraduate and postgraduate subjects: ENG1003 Freshman Seminar for Engineering, AAE2004 Introduction to Aviation Systems & Air Transport Regulation, AAE3004 Dynamical Systems and Control, AAE4006 Flight Mechanics and Control Systems, AAE4002 Capstone Project, AAE4203 Guidance and Navigation, and AAE6102 Satellite Communication and Navigation (RPg). The approach also extends into research supervision — RPg students prototype and publish open-source through GitHub (e.g., UrbanNav, GraphGNSSLib, pyrtklib), maximizing both research integrity and impact.

Onboarding videos (AAE2004 series)

Student-facing tutorials produced for the course and the lab’s GitHub-pedagogy showcase:

• Installing Python and VS Code (Windows)
• Installing VS Code, Git, and Python (macOS)
• VS Code + Git: basic operations
• VS Code + Git: resolving merge conflicts

Project example — A* algorithm

Introduction to the A* algorithm — the representative project the students implement collaboratively on GitHub.

Publications and presentations

• Hsu, L. T.*, Cheng, M. H., Wen, W., Li, B., Wen, C., Zhang, G., Luo, X., & Xu, R. (2025). GitHub as a Supplementary Educational Tool to Improve Online Collaboration & Communication, Problem-solving, and Learning-to-learn Attributes: Implementation and Results. ICLT 2025 (Proceedings, ISSN 3104-4980). Open-access paper · news post.
• Hsu, L. T., Wen, W., Zhang, G., & Wen, C. (2022). Using GitHub as an Assistive Educational Tool to Improve Students’ Online Collaboration, Problem Solving and Communication. SUSTech New Engineering Education Forum (invited), Shenzhen, March 2022.
• Hsu, L. T. (2022, October). Using GitHub to Shape Students’ Problem-solving and L2L Abilities through Flip-Class Project Teaching. PolyU Educational Development Centre (EDC) — Education talk on Technology-Enhanced Learning Showcases (invited).
• Hsu, L. T. (2022, November). Strategy on Adapting GitHub-based Pedagogy. Internal PolyU showcase to colleagues from AP, HTI, RS, and CEE.

Case Study: LifeSparrow — from the classroom to the field

The clearest evidence that the pedagogy produces not just graduates but founders solving real societal problems.

Students nourished through the lab’s project-based teaching and the URIS undergraduate-research pipeline — led by Max Lee (now an HKPFS PhD candidate in AAE, mentored by Prof. Hsu since his award-winning undergraduate internship) with co-founder Josua Chan — evolved their FJ005 project (Techathon Smart City Champion, 2021) into LifeSparrow Solutions, whose DIAS system applies AI human-detection to drone imagery for mountain search-and-rescue — cutting search time by more than 65%.

• Real-world impact: LifeSparrow partnered with the Hong Kong Fire Services Department on an AI drone-imagery search system, used in an actual missing-hiker search in Ma On Shan Country Park (SCMP).
• Backing: an HKSTP incubatee, with around HK$1.8 million raised from PolyU, Cyberport, and Hong Kong Science Park (PolyU, 2024).
• Recognition: Max Lee was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia (Consumer Technology) 2024 (PolyU featured alumni); the work has been featured by CNN (2023 and a 2025 “Tech for Good” feature).

The arc — freshman GitHub project → URIS research → Forbes-recognised, deployed start-up that helps save lives — is the pedagogy’s thesis made concrete: engage students with real problems, and they don’t just learn, they build.

Note: LifeSparrow is distinct from Prof. Hsu’s other current start-up activity. Keep the two separate in any external materials.

Funded Teaching Programs (as PI)

• PolyU Online Teaching Development Grant — Quality Incentive Scheme on Online Teaching, HK$960,000 (PI), 2021–2023. Project focus: systematic development of online group collaborations for a 4-year undergraduate programme through a global online software collaboration platform (GitHub).
• PolyU Large Equipment Fund for Teaching — HK$1,132,815 (PI as team leader), 2016–2018. Procured Aircraft Satellite Navigation System (NovAtel SPAN-CPT, HK$237k), 3D LiDAR (Velodyne, HK$304k), and Vision-based Motion Capture System (VICON, HK$591k) for student learning of flight mechanics, navigation, and control.
• URIS Undergraduate Research Internship Scheme — 4 funded UG projects (~HK$300k aggregate), 2021–2023.

Public Engagement & Outreach

Beyond formal teaching, Prof. Hsu has delivered widely-watched public lectures on GNSS for non-specialist audiences:

Global Navigation Satellite System and Our Daily Lives (全球導航衛星系統與我們的日常生活) — Hong Kong Space Museum public lecture, November 2022. Government Aerospace Pop-science Activities.

Earlier: BeiDou Satellite Navigation System and Our Daily Lives — PolyU Public Aerospace Series, November 2021.

STEM outreach — recurring workshops (e.g., Building a Robot from Scratch) for secondary-school students; HK Youth Aerospace Innovation Competition (香港青少年航天創新大賽) recurring judging role.

Promotion of Teaching Quality Among Peers

A practical lesson from scaling the pedagogy: a top-down push got minimal uptake, but framing GitHub adoption around colleagues’ research — letting them extend their own work and their RPg students’ projects through the platform — proved the effective incentive.

• Peer Reviewer for Teaching Practice — assessed Dr. Chee Tong’s promotion case; Dr. Tong successfully promoted from Teaching Fellow to Senior Teaching Fellow.
• Advised colleague on internal teaching grant — supported Dr. Peng Lu’s HK$1,020,915 teaching equipment proposal; served as team member.
• Subject-based Rubrics rollout — co-developed with Dr. Frank Zou and Dr. Kam Ng; adopted across AAE core subjects; used in HKIE 2020 full accreditation.

Student Voices (selected, from AARs across years)

“He teaches us with heart and answers every question.” (2016-17)

“He is always passionate in his lectures, making the lectures always interesting to attend.” (2018-19)

“Best Lecturer I ever meet.” (2018-19)

“Even while in hospital after an accident, he ran make-up classes and replied every email.” (2018-19)

“Some other lecturers are like zombies from walking dead, just reading whatever is on lecture slide. His lectures were the best I have had this sem so far.” (2022-23)

“Active and with passion when teaching.” (2020-21)

“Timely feedback received 4.9/5” (postgraduate subject, 2024-25)

Student spotlights. Among those mentored through these subjects: Su Meiling (BEng Aviation Engineering, 2019–23; HK Government Scholarship awardee) and Ang Jershon (BEng Aviation Engineering, 2021–25; HKIE Scholarship — one of only three awardees across all eligible HK institutions).

Students in their own words on learning through GitHub-based pedagogy — featuring Ang Jershon.