by Tiffany Perumpail, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Academic Interns (AIs) are former CS61A students who help current students in office hours and labs. Any student who passed CS61A can go through training and volunteer as an AI. In Spring 2017, our students’ Final Survey Continue Reading >>
by Rosalind Diaz, English Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Grading rubrics are an invaluable teaching tool. Ideally, they promote fairness and transparency in assessment, and help students set reasonable goals, develop metacognition, and practice self-assessment. But a rubric can also act as a gatekeeper of knowledge. Vague, abstruse, or circularly Continue Reading >>
by Jingxun Chen, Molecular and Cell Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Challenge: Genetics is a difficult subject for many students because of its abstract concepts. In other MCB classes, students often learn biology through descriptive narratives—each step of a cellular process is drawn out, organisms’ morphologies are compared, or Continue Reading >>
by Linda Louie, French Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2017 Revision is one of the most challenging parts of the writing process to teach because it is so specific to each individual student and paper. Furthermore, many students come into writing courses with a preconception of what “revision” entails that is Continue Reading >>
The Spring 2016 Teaching Conference provided an orientation for graduate students new to the GSI role. Discipline-Cluster (D-C) workshops led by experienced GSIs addressed pressing questions about getting started as a GSI. The afternoon featured a performance by Berkeley Interactive Theater, which led to a discussion of how GSIs in their role as teachers Continue Reading >>
by Allison Kidder, Environmental Science, Policy, & Management
I needed to find another way to help bring these concepts to life for my students. I recalled learning most intently when seeing examples of each concept out in the field in their unique spatial and temporal context. Using a little imagination and the wide variety of UC Berkeley’s campus resources available to us, I devised a series of field trips for my students on weeks they were learning new concepts. We traveled all over campus.
by Aaron Lee, Astronomy
I found that students were far too trusting of their calculators, possibly due to a fear of math, and they blindly accepted whatever the calculator returned. My solution…was to include weekly activities that taught students how to relate new concepts to familiar experiences to develop their intuition about the subject matter.
by John DeNero, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The course’s original syllabus began with a conceptual roadmap of how various problems related to each other. But since our students didn’t understand the individual problems yet, they didn’t understand the purpose of the framework…To infuse continuity into the course, I designed a series of projects around Pacman, a classic video game with lots of retro charm.
by Tatiana Fedyk, Business Administration
At the beginning of this academic year, I chose a new strategy: make the subject itself interesting and funny, attractive and gameful. For every discussion, I created some entertaining exercise related to the new topic just covered in class. Though difficult at the beginning, it became easier with every new preparation and brought a lot of excitement into my classes.
by Vasudha Paramasivan, South and Southeast Asian Studies
To my class, it seemed almost irreverent to read into such marvelous tales, prosaic explanations of power struggles and gender discrimination. While their skepticism was welcome, I had to find some way of addressing their resistance to the idea that there could be meaning and purpose behind folkloric narratives.