Three Years of Pandemic: HKUST's Online Teaching, Hall Isolation and Shifting Pedagogies (2020–2023)

In HKUST's 2020 annual report, "providing self-isolation facilities for hall residents returning from overseas" reads as a quietly delivered line item; two years later, the official FAQ carries a blunt negation — "student halls cannot be used for quarantine purposes." Same hall buildings, same institutional stance, and somewhere in between, a policy U-turn. How that corner was turned is what this article lays out, semester by semester.

One-sentence conclusion: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) switched to real-time online (RTO) teaching in response to Covid-19 from February 2020; its hall policy swung from an early role as ad-hoc quarantine facilities to an explicit "not for use as isolation venues" position; in August 2021 it became the first university in Hong Kong to require a digital pass for vaccination or testing; and it only returned fully to pre-pandemic normalcy on 1 March 2023, when the government lifted the mask mandate.

The University's official chronology for the whole of 2020 contains just one entry — "blockchain degree credentialing" — which turns out to be the least telling corner of its pandemic administration. That year HKUST did far more: moved classes online, pressed halls into service as quarantine facilities and then withdrew them, and wrote "students need not be physically present in Hong Kong" into official arrangements — until 2023, when the last pandemic measure was lifted. This article reconstructs those three years, which the official chronology skips over in a single line, semester by semester, drawing on the University's own covid19info.hkust.edu.hk archive^※ and its successive annual reports.

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# At a glance: how did teaching modes shift across the three years?

Before unpacking the details, here is the semester-by-semester skeleton — the table that structures the whole article, with each later section filling in one cell.

Reading down the table, a clear arc emerges: the density of online teaching ran from "total" in 2020, to "tiered by class size" in 2020/21, to a brief brush with "in-person by default" in the second half of 2021 — interrupted by the emergency shift in early 2022 — before settling in 2023. Each segment of that arc is expanded below.

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# The rushed spring of 2020: why did HKUST move classes online in February?

At the end of January 2020, Covid-19 had not yet spread widely across Hong Kong, but HKUST was already moving ahead of the curve. According to the <COVID-19 Info@HKUST> archive, on 24 January 2020 the University announced the suspension of all outward-bound activities to mainland China until further notice^※ — several days before the Hong Kong SAR government began progressively tightening its own entry and quarantine measures. That decision marks the earliest point in HKUST's pandemic administration that this article can trace.

The move to online teaching followed almost immediately. According to the Centre for Education Innovation (CEI), in response to the outbreak, HKUST adopted a real-time online (RTO) teaching mode for the Spring term of 2019/20, i.e. from February 2020^※. This was no gradual pilot but a wholesale mid-semester switch: Zoom became the University-wide platform, and CEI promptly supplied faculty with training resources and operating guides to help them move their classrooms from lecture theatres to webcams within weeks.

The switch happened in a distinctive window: all eight UGC-funded universities in Hong Kong were tightening their responses almost simultaneously. By late January, several institutions had already imposed two-week compulsory home quarantine on students returning from mainland China and required health declaration forms; HKUST was among that cohort. According to the University's Annual Report 2019–2020, the University "conducted online classes and provided self-isolation facilities for students with hall places returning from overseas"^※; the same report adds that, thanks to the efforts of management and the responsive support of the Council, the University "responded well" to the sudden crisis. That is what the decision chain looked like at the start — teaching and accommodation were tackled simultaneously, not one after the other.

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# Were the halls actually used as quarantine facilities?

For a period in the first half of 2020, HKUST's halls did briefly play the role of quarantine facilities. According to the Annual Report 2019–2020, the University's Conference Lodge, a staff quarters and student halls were all designated as on-campus quarantine facilities^※, with off-campus hotel rooms additionally arranged for use during and after quarantine. In other words, on the question "can halls be used for isolation?", HKUST's answer in early 2020 was "yes — and they already are."

Supporting measures were rolled out in parallel. The same annual report records that, from February 2020, the University ran a mask distribution programme, distributing some 463,000 masks in total to staff and hall residents by the end of June 2020^※; the campus clinic began offering testing the same month, with confirmed cases receiving follow-up counselling and help in contacting government laboratory facilities; and in April 2020 the University set up the "COVID-19 Info@HKUST" portal as a single point for policy and case updates. The report also notes that the whole response was coordinated by a senior-led cross-departmental task force, with the Health, Safety and Environment Office (HSEO) on the front line — a unit normally concerned with laboratory safety, thrust that year into the front rank of pandemic decision-making.

One detail worth recording is that these measures also spilled over into campus construction: per the annual report, a number of projects under construction were delayed by the pandemic^※, with management later finding ways to claw the schedule back; the Guangzhou campus project, a long-term undertaking begun precisely in this period, was one of them (for the full story of its preparatory phase, see The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)^※). This interlude is a reminder that 2020 at HKUST was about more than holding the line on classrooms and halls: the rhythm of campus expansion was disrupted and recovered too, though that thread lies outside this article's scope of teaching and accommodation.

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# "Halls cannot be used as isolation venues" — when did that line enter the official FAQ?

By the time of the official FAQ pages available when this article was written, the wording had been completely reversed. According to the "Student Halls" page of <COVID-19 Info@HKUST>, student halls "cannot be used for quarantine purposes; students required to undergo compulsory home quarantine must arrange quarantine elsewhere at their own expense before moving into University halls"^※; the same stance recurs on the "Quarantine and Campus" FAQ page, going further — the "University is unable to provide quarantine support on campus"^※. Taken together, these two statements read, against the 2020 annual report's "halls as quarantine facilities," like two phases of the same story: first, improvising with whatever was at hand during the emergency; later, as the pandemic normalised, the University explicitly carved this responsibility out of hall administration.

It should be noted that this article was unable to identify the exact date on which this policy turn occurred in any official announcement — the covid19info FAQ pages generally do not carry effective dates, and no independent news report tracing this specific shift was found. What can be confirmed is that both states — the early use as quarantine facilities and the later written prohibition — are each supported by official texts (recorded as such, in the spirit of the "gaps in documentation" note at the end of this article).

With the policy tightened, the formalities for moving into halls were ramped up accordingly. Per the "Student Halls" page, residents must complete a health declaration form and present supporting documents for verification; everyone entering or leaving must have their temperature taken at the front desk; those with a fever are advised to seek medical assistance; and masks are required in public areas^※. This combination of temperature checks, health declarations and mask-wearing persisted for a considerable stretch, right up to the comprehensive easing of March 2023 (see below).

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# Who paid for the quarantine hotels? What responsibility did HKUST formally disclaim?

Once halls were off the table, where were staff and students who genuinely needed compulsory quarantine supposed to go? According to the page, staff and students arriving in or returning to Hong Kong from places other than mainland China, Macau and Taiwan must complete the compulsory quarantine designated by the Hong Kong government, staying at designated quarantine hotels^※. This sentence shifts the question of "who provides quarantine" from the University's administration to the SAR government's designated-hotel regime — HKUST was no longer a venue provider but a relay station conveying government rules to its community.

Behind this shift lay the evolution of Hong Kong's overall quarantine policy: from two-week home quarantine in early 2020 to the designated-hotel regime that followed, government rules were themselves constantly tightened and adjusted, and HKUST's hall policy accordingly "stepped back" — rather than building a parallel quarantine process inside its own hall system and taking on the management risk of cross-infection, it handed that responsibility wholesale to the government's quarantine-hotel scheme. The statement that the "University is unable to provide quarantine support on campus" could be read as a disclaimer, but a more accurate reading is that the University pulled quarantine back from "self-built facilities" to "referral to the government system." This ran in parallel with — but in the opposite direction from — the other institutional developments in HKUST's hall system (capacity, room types and allocation rules are covered in The student hall system^※): one line was expanding capacity, the other contracting responsibility.

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# Students stuck outside Hong Kong: how did they complete a semester online?

Throughout the three pandemic years, a significant number of HKUST students could not be physically present in Hong Kong owing to visas, quarantine or flight availability — a particular challenge at a university where mainland and non-local students already made up a sizeable share (for the scale and structure of the mainland student population, see Mainland students: population, cultural dynamics and documented incidents^※). The University's principle was unambiguous: per the <Winter/Spring 2020/21 Term Arrangements> page, these arrangements "will not adversely affect students who are outside Hong Kong or unable to come to campus," and students, local or non-local, do not need to be physically present in Hong Kong to complete coursework and assessments^※.

At the operational level, that principle was broken into a set of workable rules. According to the page, after the add/drop period, if a class still has students located outside Hong Kong, the course is taught in "mixed mode" or "mixed-mode lite," with alternatives such as "Remote Video Capture" provided for those unable to be in Hong Kong^※. In other words, as long as one student in a class remained stranded abroad, the teaching format for the whole class had to make way for that student — a finer-grained rule than the crude tiering of "large classes online, small classes in person," determined dynamically by whether any overseas student remained in the class.

The cost of these arrangements fell along a different line: international exchange and cross-border mobility. Per the Annual Report 2019–2020, on 10 March 2020 the Hong Kong SAR government issued a red outbound travel alert for affected regions including France, Germany and Spain, and HKUST immediately suspended all outbound exchange activities for summer 2019/20^※; per the Annual Report 2020–2021, although the pandemic continued to affect regular student exchange programmes, HKUST pressed ahead in expanding partnerships so that more opportunities would be available once exchange resumed; virtual study abroad allowed more than 300 students to take part in cultural exchange and learning^※. This interlude — physical exchange suspended, virtual study abroad filling the gap — stands in instructive contrast to HKUST's regular semester-exchange system (partner-institution scale and recent recovery are covered in Student exchange and international mobility^※): over the three pandemic years, exchange narrowed from physical mobility to "agreement maintenance plus online substitutes," expanding again only in the late pandemic period.

As for exactly how many overseas students studied remotely, and in what proportion, this article found no publicly available statistics (see the note at the end). What the University published were principles and operational rules, not year-by-year counts of affected students. That is a clear gap in data completeness, recorded here honestly and not filled by estimation.

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# 2021's toughest gate in Hong Kong: vaccination, testing and the digital pass

In August 2021, HKUST moved faster than the other seven UGC-funded universities on pandemic policy. According to Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), HKUST announced that from 1 September 2021, those who were unvaccinated and not regularly tested would be barred from campus, including halls, libraries and sports facilities — the first university in Hong Kong to make uploading vaccination or test records a mandatory requirement^※; the report was published on 10 August 2021.

The technical details were filled in by another outlet. According to the Global Times, from 18 August 2021 students could upload their vaccination records or nucleic acid test results on a newly launched system in exchange for a digital pass; the policy covered students, staff, family members living on campus and frequent visitors^※. Those unwilling or unable to be vaccinated had instead to submit a test result every two weeks, with the University subsidising testing costs for those in financial difficulty. The report also quoted the University's explanation of the measure:

"give due consideration to the scientific evidence, while balancing respect for personal choice along with the responsibilities for public health." (quoted by the Global Times from the University's response)^※

That sentence captures the policy's calibration clearly — the University stressed scientific evidence on one hand while placing "personal choice" alongside "responsibilities for public health" on the other. Vaccination was not made a compulsory obligation; instead a threshold was set: "if you don't get vaccinated, you must test regularly at your own or subsidised expense." Per the Global Times, this was stricter than at other leading Hong Kong universities — other institutions at the time generally imposed similar requirements only on hall residents, whereas HKUST extended the threshold to all regular campus visitors. The policy ran almost in lockstep with the 2021/22 Fall term's target of "in-person by default" (see the summary table above): per the <Fall 2021/22 Arrangements> page, the term's target default was in-person classes on campus^※, and the vaccine/testing digital pass was precisely the supporting mechanism for that return to in-person teaching.

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# In early 2022, before Lunar New Year, classes were again hurriedly moved online

The momentum of "returning to in-person" in the second half of 2021 was broken at the start of 2022. According to The Standard, HKUST, together with the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Baptist University, moved all undergraduate and taught-postgraduate classes online from 24 January 2022 until 31 January, with exemptions for hands-on laboratory classes, studio work and scheduled examinations^※. This was a precautionary turn on the eve of Hong Kong's "fifth wave," triggered by signs of Omicron spreading in the community before the Lunar New Year.

The timing was neatly sandwiched before the Lunar New Year holiday — 24 to 31 January — after which the holiday itself began; the report noted that HKU and HKBU both planned to announce their post-holiday arrangements separately (notifying on 8 and 6 February respectively). This article found no independent report or official page confirming whether HKUST extended its online teaching in February 2022, after the Lunar New Year break. Given that Hong Kong was then at the peak of the fifth wave (the government repeatedly extended the suspension of in-person classes in primary and secondary schools in the same period), there is a visible documentary gap around the University's specific teaching arrangements in this stretch — recorded here honestly as "no independent report found confirming whether the extension occurred," with no inference made.

What can be confirmed is that this disruption did not reverse the University's broader trajectory back towards in-person teaching. Per the page, with effect from Monday 25 April 2022, all offices and departments of the University resumed normal operations^※ — almost exactly three months after the January emergency switch to online, and roughly matching the rhythm of Hong Kong's fifth wave receding from its peak and social-distancing controls being progressively relaxed.

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# How was the return to normalcy accomplished, step by step?

Threading the verifiable milestones from 2021 to 2023 together, the return to normalcy was not a single announcement but a journey completed in stages.

The easiest point on this timeline to miss is the gap of a full half-year between "fully in-person" and "mask mandate lifted" — classrooms had returned to regular face-to-face teaching by September 2022, yet mask-wearing and stricter requirements around the clinic persisted until March 2023. Per the homepage, following the government's cancellation of the mandatory mask mandate from 1 March 2023, HKUST concurrently lifted its last pandemic measure: masks were no longer required in classrooms and laboratories, though still required at the clinic, and confirmed cases no longer needed to report to the University^※. The government announcement itself is independently verifiable: the Hong Kong SAR government announced on 28 February 2023 that all mandatory mask-wearing requirements would be lifted from 1 March^※ — the two texts' dates align perfectly, giving this three-year timeline its cleanest and most economical close.

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# What did three years of shifting teaching modes leave behind?

Stepping back over the three years, the University's handling of its teaching and accommodation lines shows a shared rhythm of "respond first, contract boundaries later": online teaching, launched as a wholesale switch in early 2020, was progressively refined into finer-grained rules — tiered by class size, then determined dynamically by the presence of overseas students; halls, meanwhile, were pulled back from their emergency role as quarantine facilities into a cleanly bounded state — "not for quarantine, referral only." The two lines converge on the same destination: a gradual shift from "the University absorbs everything" to "the University defines its responsibilities clearly, while the government and individuals each bear their proper share."

But the three years were not only a story about teaching and accommodation. In the same period, the University was exploring digital responses to needs indirectly created by the pandemic across other administrative fronts — the blockchain-based electronic degree credentialing launched in 2020 (see Blockchain-verified credentials^※) being a case in point: not devised for pandemic control, yet answering the practical demand of an online-teaching era in which students could not come to campus in person to verify documents and transcripts. The official chronology's lone 2020 entry of "blockchain degree credentialing" is, set against the fuller record of these three years, simply one of many facets of this administrative history that happened to leave a written trace. The online-teaching decision chain, the hall policy U-turn, the vaccine digital pass and the staged return to normalcy together make up the blank that the official chronology never opened up.

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# Further reading

• University chronology — The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (1986–2026)^※
• Blockchain-verified credentials — Hong Kong's first counterfeit-proof e-diploma^※
• The student hall system — an overview of residential college life at HKUST^※
• Mainland students: population, cultural dynamics and documented incidents^※
• Student exchange and international mobility^※