Getting Personal: Creating a Unique Personalized Educational Experience for Students in GE Courses

Getting Personal: Creating a Unique Personalized Educational Experience for Students in GE Courses

Date: 12 March 2012 (Monday)
Speaker: Prof. Melissa Fitch (University of Arizona)

Studies have shown that the more educators are able to personalize the learning experience for students, making it relevant to their daily lives outside the university, the more likely it is that the course outcomes will be achieved. Personalization also fosters a greater engagement on the part of the student in terms of preparation and study. After the seminar, faculty will be able to:

  1. utilize simple strategies to solicit, retain and later incorporate information about students during course lectures and activities;
  2. explain the connection between student engagement and achieving course outcomes;
  3. develop a plan to use student information to create an exciting, positive learning experience.

About the Speaker

Prof. Melissa Fitch is a Visiting Fulbright Professor in the area of General Education at CUHK and an Associate Professor of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Arizona, where she received the University of Arizona's Five Star Teaching Award, the institution's highest teaching honor, in 2008 and the General Education Teaching Award in 2004. Since 2002 Prof. Fitch has been editor-in-chief of the academic journal Studies in Latin American Popular Culture (University of Texas Press).  She is author of Side Dishes: Latin/a American Women and Cultural Production (Rutgers University Press, 2009) and well as numerous critical essays. While in Hong Kong, she is finishing revisions of her second book, a study on Argentine tango in the global imaginary, as well as conducting research for her third and fourth book-length projects, both related to the presence of Latin American popular culture in greater China.