Piotr joined HKUST in August 2021 and since then has been a staff member of the Center for Language Education. Prior to joining HKUST, Piotr worked at King’s College London – King’s Education, where he taught society and academic writing modules. His research at King’s was in line with King’s Vision 2029 and concerned research-inspired curriculum and assessment design. During his time at King’s Piotr’s students were nominated and won multiple awards including the best MA Thesis of 2020. Piotr himself was too nominated for various awards including Tutor of the Year 2019 and Best Colleague 2019.
Piotr also spent over five years working at Xi’an-Jiaotong University in China, where he designed and delivered English for Built Environment module. Another one of Piotr’s duties was internal moderation of year 1 modules and close liaison with UK based external moderators. Piotr’s students were nominated for multiple awards and most notably finished second in E-Volo Architecture Competition 2019 and also second in Research-led Learning & Teaching Award 2018. During his time at Xi’an Jiaotong University, Piotr was heavily involved in designing Higher Education Comprehensive Evaluations Admissions for Jiangsu and Guandong provinces and he chaired an examination panel from 2015 to 2018. Piotr also had significant input in restructuring year 1 and year 2 programmes and introducing research-led components to summative assessment in year 2 modules.
Before his move to China, Piotr lived and worked in Derby in the United Kingdom, where he was employed both at Derby University – Institute of Education and Derby City Council- Education Department. Piotr’s work at both institutions resulted in changes of needs analysis and admissions of part-time students within the local authority’s education department and was highlighted in 2011 provider’s Ofsted inspection. Also, during his time in Derby an e-learning team Piotr was a member of was nominated and won 2011 TES E-learning Award for the use of Moodle and engaging with hard-to-reach communities.
Professional Interests
Currently, Piotr works on a PhD researching international schools and expatriate teachers in the South China region and the impacts of internationalisation on semi-rural communities. Piotr’s previous research projects included research-inspired curriculum design and enhancement of creativity and autonomy through the use of innovative assessment.
In his free time, Piotr enjoys playing sports, badminton and water-sports being his favourite ones.
Scholarship
2020
Conference Presentation
A case study of curriculum and assessment design in content and language integrated learning context at an EMI University in China
Piotr Zychowicz
London - UCL
Integrating creativity and autonomy at EMI Universities in China seems to be one of the main challenges of a successful curriculum and assessment design. The switch from the test teaching approach to content and language learning proves a significant difficulty, especially at those universities that offer UK degrees in China. As a practitioner teaching and designing modules for Chinese students for over a decade, I will aim at providing insights into successful curriculum and assessment design that takes into consideration not only students educational background, but also their prospective international MA degrees requirements. This presentation will demonstrate what creativity and autonomy can lead to if the right approach and tools are applied within the curriculum and assessment design.
2019
Working Paper - Not Peer Reviewed
Achieving Creativity Through Research Led Learning and Teaching
Piotr Zychowicz
IAFOR Tokyo - Asian Conference on Language Learning 2019
‘Creativity’ seems to be the buzzword driving contemporary programmes of education and having a substantial impact on curriculum design worldwide. However, many programmes simply include the word ‘creative’ and leave students to their own devices, without effective guidance or examples of what creativity means. Such curriculum design can lead to disastrous consequences, especially in countries that heavily rely on teacher-centred approaches in education, where students are closely supervised throughout their primary and secondary education, and once they progress to university they are expected to study independently without such supervision. One of the ways of encouraging autonomy and creativity in Higher Education is stimulating interest and curiosity, however not every module can be interesting and inspire curiosity and not every student will find interest in all fields. This presentation will describe how interest, curiosity and creativity were enthused in year 2 university EAP students at an English Medium Instruction University in China through research-led learning and teaching principles.