by Holly Watkins, Music Addressing the question of how music can represent images or ideas poses serious difficulties for music scholars, let alone for undergraduate non-majors...How, then, might a GSI introduce the thorny problem of musical representation in a class...which assumes no familiarity with musical notation or performing ability?
by Alexandra Minnis and Jennifer Bensadoun, Epidemiology With large sections and students who represent backgrounds as distinct as laboratory-based infectious disease, public policy, and social and behavioral health, engaging students in exploring the epidemiological methods and in stimulating discussions of course material proved to be a challenge.
by William Hayes, Sociology While sociology of culture courses regularly assign selections from his text, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, US students usually encounter these readings without the necessary theoretical knowledge (symbolic capital) or cultural knowledge (cultural capital) for understanding the main arguments or referents in his survey analysis of 1960s Paris. Hence, the teaching problem emerges of how to "materialize" these Parisian abstractions within our Berkeley students.
by A. S. Cheng, Mechanical Engineering Many engineering students have been conditioned that they can succeed by simply duplicating textbook examples or blindly churning through mathematical formulas without understanding the underlying theory. Teaching these students to engage in critical thinking is vital, and was a particular challenge in the course ME 107A: Experimentation and Measurement.
by Jennifer Powell, Molecular and Cell Biology To address my goal of encouraging the students to take the quizzes seriously so they would be useful to everyone as a tool to evaluate their progress in the course, I developed a quiz strategy for my discussion section...Rather than just telling them the [quiz] answers, I asked volunteers to come up to the chalkboard and write their answers for the rest of the class.
by Deanna Kiser, Near Eastern Studies The daily activities and concerns of the earlier society's participants are lost on modern people, who view the entire culture as dead. This affects new students to the field in particular... I have found that helping Egyptology students to identify with the ancient Egyptians generates more enthusiasm for the subject matter and makes it meaningful to them.
by Joel Thornton, Chemistry Problem solving requires a vocabulary of the necessary equations and conceptual approaches, and I would drill the students on the equations and concepts discussed in lecture that week. My drills were in the form of quiz-show games, relay races, student vs. student competitions, anything to avoid the inherent boredom that comes with performing rote tasks.
by Mathew Gelbart, Music I feel strongly that a course of this nature should not give musically experienced students an unfair advantage, especially since it is nominally geared toward those with little to no musical background. I want the less experienced students to come away not with an inferiority complex, but rather, with a new interest in some exciting music.
by Paul Dosh, Political Science Encouraging diverse forms of participation began on the first day of class with the tone that I set and the grading system I presented...[and] required persistent and explicit efforts throughout the semester.
by Andrea Zemgulys, English The skill of analytic writing is not only difficult for students to learn, but difficult for the teacher to communicate without suggesting that students douse their work with high-faluting or apparently argumentative words (such as "hence"). My aim is to show students how the thoughtful use of simple language can transform descriptive sentences to analytic ones.