Course Development

Creative Web-based Applications

About

Are you interested in software that can supplement or substitute those found in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite? If so, please review our curated list of creative web-based tools that will allow you and your students to develop audio, graphic, photo, and film projects.

Creative Discovery Fellows (CDF) Support

Resources

To help support creative/digital projects in your courses, the following set of resources are available for immediate implementation.

What We Want, What We Need, What We Have: Knowing Our Rights in Uncertain Times

Event Description

This session featured a panel of campus experts who are actively engaged with the theoretical, personal and legal dimensions of federal actions on immigration as they impact our campus, contextualizing them within broader work for belonging, academic freedom and social justice. Speakers explored what protections exist, where and how to advocate, and how to mobilize around our values. Drawing on the insights and resources shared during the What to Do If ICE Comes to Campus event, we created this page to continue building and expanding resources...

The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading

Event Description

Building on the groundwork of the Antiracism Winter Institute, the CDF Program co-sponsored and co-facilitated a follow-up seminar in late April centered on contract grading. The two-day workshop, The Problem(s) with Grading: Making a Case for Contract Grading, invited participants to explore two models of contract grading, Specifications Grading and Labor-based Contract Grading. On the first day, participants engaged in current research that explores how traditional grading methods structure...

Antiracism Pedagogy & Equity-Based Learning Winter Institute

Event Description

Since 2018, the CDF program has supported instructors in developing creative design assignments, assignments that are intentionally built to support faculty and students in ways that are adaptive, equity-oriented, and foster antiracism. In the CDF Winter Institute participants developed actionable strategies that build antiracist and equity-based education.

In conversation with CDF faculty, staff, and students, the Winter Institute discussed how within the current condition of remote instruction and the devastating effects of the...

Teaching in Summer Workshop Series

Every year we host workshops that focus on some of the best approaches to teaching an intensive six- or ten-week summer course at UC Berkeley. Among the topics discussed include strategies for managing extended summer class time, what to expect from summer student enrollment, the specifics of the American Cultures curriculum requirement, and teaching to issues of racial and economic justice in diverse classrooms.

Teaching in Summer 2025

Summary On May 12, 2025, the American Cultures Center partnered with Berkeley Summer Sessions and the Center for Teaching and Learning to host our annual teaching in summer workshop. Covered topics included:

Inclusive, supportive and effective summer teaching strategies from the Center for Teaching and Learning staff

An overview of student demographics, key academic policies, and the range of resources available to support all students, including visiting and...

What to Do If ICE Comes to Campus: Rights, Recommendations, and Resources

Background

The ongoing national conversation about immigration status lies across a bipartisan political landscape, but statements made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Thomas Homan indicate that enforcement will be significantly increased and specifically target California.

On February 26, 2018, in response to the increased and specifically targeted immigration enforcement in California, across the U.C. system broadly and at U.C. Berkeley specifically, procedures and recommendations were shared on best preparing to support all members of our...

Difficult Knowledge, Trauma Informed Pedagogy and Safe-ish Spaces

Event Description

Violence and trauma are all around us—fatal shootings by police, sexual violence, family separations, addiction, abuse, displacement of refugees. Often, these situations give rise to individual healing journeys and collective efforts to create change. But the pain and loss embedded in them also have a damaging effect long after the events have passed.

We invite many difficult experiences into our classrooms, historically intimate and distant, often through written and visual text depicting traumatic events and experiences. At the same time, we have many students...