Professor Shekhar Madhukar KUMTA

Recipient of 2012 UGC Teaching Award

Affiliation at the time of the award
Deputy Head, Musculoskeletal Tumor Team, Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Award Citation
Professor Kumta's approach represents a true melding of research, practice and education. He has made extensive use of e-learning platforms which simulate complex cases to bridge the gap between the textbook learning and the clinical teaching. He prepares his students to work with real patients. The Panel was very impressed that Professor Kumta engages not only the mind but also the soul of his students. In one particularly inspiring project, he helped students and interns develop empathy with distressed or dying patients, in a manner that students found transformative. His work is widely respected both locally and internationally, and his innovative E-learning tools have been adopted by teachers in several universities both inside and outside Hong Kong.

Professor Kumta's team has developed a "mobile-apps-making" platform for teachers to convert their teaching materials for integration into apps without the assistance of programmers. He plans to spend his award grant to enable teachers in the Healthcare and Health Science disciplines across institutions in Hong Kong to plan and develop mobile-learning resources and to analyse the impact of such platform.

Video on Teaching Philosophies