Supporting the Mental Health of Students and GSIs
The GSI Teaching & Resource Center is pleased to host three workshops this semester, facilitated by Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), to support the wellbeing of students and GSIs.
Learning How to Learn: Teaching Self-Awareness in Engineering
by Adam Uliana, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 “I studied, like, forever on everything we learned except what was on the exam. And I just got unlucky with dumb math mistakes.” Such overly simplified explanations echoed the room as I passed out graded midterm exams in…
Teaching Fast and Slow: The Gradual Introduction of Scientific Writing in a Fast- Paced Lab
by Clarissa Towle, Materials Science and Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 Challenge: MSE 45L is an intense materials science laboratory course for which I was a GSI in the Fall of 2017. This was the first university-level class that most of my students had taken, as many of them…
Developing Narratives for Aspiring Biologists
by Victor Reyes-Umana, Plant and Microbial Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 A game of hot potato, borrowing a book from the library, and how a crowd of people enters a room may not sound like relevant topics to bring up during a Biology 1A discussion—but for my students, these…
Facilitating Dialogue and Learning Across Language and Cultural Differences in American Cultures Courses
by Frances Ramos, Graduate School of Education Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 The American Cultures (AC) requirement provides Berkeley students with the opportunity to critically explore the complexities of our society and the contributions, experiences, and challenges of peoples historically marginalized in our curriculum. AC courses not only enrich the…
Using Phenomena-Based Inquiry to Increase Class Participation
by Rachael Olliff Yang, Integrative Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 At the beginning of every class, instructors are faced with the challenge of encouraging participation. I was able to successfully increase class participation using phenomena-based inquiry. In Fall 2018 I co-taught the field section and lab of General Biology…
From 40 to 400 to 1,400: Providing Formative Feedback in Large-Scale Courses
by Kevin Lin, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 Students learn computer science (CS) by doing. In CS 61A, a highly-rated introductory CS course at UC Berkeley, students are introduced to new concepts in lecture, go hands-on to learn the solution process in lab and discussion…
Making it Real – Developing Socially, Politically, and Ethically Aware Data Scientists
by Nitin Kohli, School of Information Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 Behind the Data: Humans and Values (Info 188) deals with the social, political, and ethical considerations of data science. Data science solutions are actively being deployed in diverse settings, implicating values such as privacy, fairness, and freedom of expression.
The Power of Personalized Interventions
by Audrey Haynes, Integrative Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 “It’s nice to know someone actually cares.” A student in Biology 1B said that to me at the end of a meeting. She had not passed the first exam and we were brainstorming about how to improve. For a variety…
Online Research in the Age of Google
by Nicholaus Gutierrez, Rhetoric Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 Students in R1B classes are asked to engage in research that involves acquiring relevant information through reliable sources, and to use those sources to produce new knowledge on a given topic. This can be a challenge in the age of Google,…