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 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…
GSIs are invited to check out the Academic Innovation Studio (AIS). Managed by Educational Technology Services, the facility offers workstations for screen capture, voice recording, and video editing among other things, as well as comfortable spaces for sharing and collaborating on projects. AIS also houses support for bCourses, and instructional…
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 Shelly Steward, Sociology To make theory a way of seeing and understanding the world, [students] needed to be reminded of it outside of lectures, sections, and assignments. How could I insert sociological ideas into students’ everyday lives beyond the classroom? My strategy to address this problem was to create a course Twitter account.
by Kathryn Fleishman, English Challenged with independent critical thinking and absorbed in a network of ideas that reached out of our classroom and into their everyday lives, my students developed the willingness to risk an argument along with a strong grasp of the research process. … [S]tudents polished the opinions they had proffered as tweets and comments into solid theses for their individual research projects, transforming uncertain, visceral reactions into logical, distinctive arguments.
by Nicholas Knight, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science I knew it would be completely infeasible to teach half of the class how to program during office hours or via a forum. So for the first homework, I designed teams that each had a member with computer programming experience. As a result, every team completed the assignment, and the collaborative write-up ensured that each team member understood the material, even if one team member did the majority of the programming. I was explicit with the class about our strategy to combine programmers and non-programmers.
by Thunwa Theerakarn, Mathematics For many concepts in this subject, having geometric intuition is very helpful for a better understanding. However, many students struggle to visualize these concepts because they cannot actually “see” them...To help students develop geometric thinking, I used Mathematica to create interactive applets that can display multiple three-dimensional graphics at the same time and can overlay extra information on those graphics.
by Ashley Leyba, History Over time it became clear to me that, more often than not, the discussions were a showcase of what I, and not my students, found intellectually exciting. I wanted something more for my students.
by Marquise McGraw, Economics I innovated by...creat[ing] an exercise that required students to integrate multiple concepts and skills to solve...This type of activity proved to be much more effective in promoting student learning than the standard “chalk and talk” delivery.