Recap of Professional Development Seminar on Challenges and Opportunities of General Education

On Oct 30, CTLE hosted a professional development seminar with a focus on the challenges and opportunities within General Education (GE). About 70 UM academic staff attended the event, which featured one external speaker and one UM speaker.

Prof. Thomas Lee, the Director of the Office of University General Education at Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), delivered a seminar on fostering critical thinking in GE amongst the challenges posed by generative AI (GenAI). He emphasized that nurturing critical thinking is essential to GE and highlighted the significance of reading and writing in this context. Prof. Lee explored the complex processes involved in effective reading and writing. Urging educators to stay alert to the implications of GenAI on students’ learning experiences in GE, He cautioned that students who rely on GenAI to replace any key component of these skills risk missing out on mastering the complex operations necessary for proficient reading and writing. During his seminar, Prof. Lee also introduced to the audience the design of the foundational courses in CUHK’s GE curriculum.

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Following this, Prof. Garry Wong, the Head of General Education Programme at UM, presented an overview of the GE courses offered at the University. He shared information about course offerings, sections and enrollments. Prof. Wong highlighted some of the popular GE courses from different disciplines such as performing arts, humanities, business and sciences. Additionally, he outlined the process for developing new GE courses at UM and engaged in discussions with colleagues about the future direction of GE offerings at UM.

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