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This chapter defines the concept of innovation in the context of higher education by discussing the implementation of a dashboard in a university English program. A dashboard is a personalized feedback tool and a common “big data” application. The challenges arising in the process of developing and implementing such innovations have seldom been explored. However, in this study, the English Language Centre of a Hong Kong university developed a dashboard called course diagnostic reports (CDR) that was piloted with over 400 students from 39 classes. This chapter reports the findings of both a questionnaire evaluating the CDR and 14 interviews that were conducted with course leaders, subject teachers, and students. Discussions of the tool revealed the complex process of innovation. It was found that, for stakeholders, innovation is a continuous process that requires compromises and that an innovation must cross a minimum usability threshold before continuing through the innovation process.

Despite postgraduates’ struggles to master English academic writing, the fulfilment of postgraduates’ motivational needs in classes of English academic writing has been scarcely researched. This study examines the motivational practices of teachers of postgraduate English academic writing, the perceived effectiveness of the adopted strategies, and possible ways to further enhance their effectiveness. Reflective writing was collected from 59 doctoral students who spoke English as a foreign language (EFL) and were enrolled in a thesis writing course. The major findings are: (1) The reported motivational strategies correspond fairly closely to those endorsed in Dörnyei’s influential framework, yet some appear to be common teaching techniques; (2) the majority of the reported positive effects pertain to enhanced knowledge, performance, and confidence; and (3) the participants called for increased use of motivational strategies, more student engagement, and diverse facilitative input from the English teacher. The findings confirm the need to extend studies on the use and perceptions of motivational strategies to postgraduate language teaching contexts.