We encourage GSIs to use a Google Form to get a preliminary sense of students’ needs at the beginning of the semester. While GSIs should take care not to require students to share personal information on this “pre-course survey” (for example, by asking if students have childcare duties), they might include questions about students’:

• Year and (intended) major,
• Experience with similar courses,
• Access to the technology and other materials required to engage in the course,
• Possible challenges to full participation,
• Reflections on what has supported their learning in previous sections/studios/labs.

In addition, we recommend including a question about the phonetic pronunciation of students’ names so that GSIs can make every effort to pronounce them correctly. Doctor Joy Esboldt, an alumnus of the Berkeley School of Education, also helps students pronounce each other’s names correctly by including phonetic pronunciation on her section activity sheets.

Another best practice, used by Dakota Robinson, a Ph.D. student in Linguistics, is to include an optional pre-course survey question asking which gender pronoun(s) students would like their GSI to use when referring to them in the context of the course. This gives students the opportunity to share how they would like to be identified without forcing them to reveal private information; it also acknowledges that they may use different pronouns in different contexts.

After administering a pre-course survey, it is crucial to follow up with students who indicate that they might be in need of support. For example, a GSI might email students to plan for possible absences or refer them to relevant resources (e.g., the Basic Needs Center; the Student Technology Equity Program). GSIs can also use pre-course survey responses to build community on the first day of section/studio/lab by presenting summaries of students’ responses (e.g., the number of students present in each year and major). However, if you take this approach, be sure to specify on your survey which answers may be de-identified and shared in the aggregate.