by Katherine Blackford, Chemistry Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 Each time I have taught organic chemistry, students have come to me wondering why, even after memorizing all of the necessary content, they still struggled to solve exam problems. They have mentioned running out of time after realizing too late that…
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,…
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…
by Varsha Desai, Chemistry Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Experiments in chemistry laboratories often have complex protocols where students perform several steps sequentially to obtain a “correct” product. Seemingly small mistakes can result in a domino effect that leads to inconclusive end results. For example, students forget to “mix” a…
by Alexandria Yuan, Business Administration (Home Department: Goldman School of Public Policy) Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2016 The Problem: There are two things that I have to actively fight in the classroom: complacency, and its closely related cousin, a kind of superficial motivation for students to participate in class simply…
by Christiane Stachl, Chemistry Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2016 I was a graduate student instructor for Chemistry 4A in fall 2015, and I have to say that the general chemistry courses at Berkeley are anything but a joke. For example, Chem 4A is intended for chemistry majors with a strong…
by Hayden Shelby, Environmental Design (Home Department: City and Regional Planning) Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2016 For the first week of class, my students in Environmental Design 100: The City: Theories and Methods of Urban Studies were expected to read three difficult, foundational works of urban theory. When I attempted…
by Rong “Rocky” Ye, Chemistry Chemistry 112A had a five-hour lab section every week. [I]n the first few weeks of the semester, students had difficulties in finishing all the work on time… I saw the need to improve [their] efficiency without causing too much intervention in their independent thinking.
by Tobias Smith, Jurisprudence and Social Policy In my sections I reimagine attendance as a weekly opportunity for a brief exchange with my students. In the last few minutes of class I give each student a blank index card to fill out and immediately hand back to me. On the front the student writes the date and her or his name. On the back the student reflects briefly on a prompt.
by Emily A. Hellmich, French (Home Department: Education) I realized that while my students did have passionate opinions as well as a desire to communicate them, they hesitated: not knowing one specific word represented an insurmountable barrier to them that shut down communication and sent them running to a more expert resource… I led the students in the creation of a “semiotic brainstorm” meant to show them not only just how much French they already knew but also to detail, step-by-step, one way to access this knowledge in communication.