Course Development

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...

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...

Faculty Grants

About

The American Cultures Center offers various grants and fellowships throughout the year to current AC instructors as well as faculty interested in creating, revising, or further developing an American Cultures course or an American Cultures Engaged Scholarship course. We also offer grants to faculty interested in learning how to develop, use and incorporate film clips as into their teaching. To learn more about these opportunities, please visit the links below.

How to Have Political Conversations in the Classroom?

Event Description:

Tuesday, September 25th, 2018 marked the largest National Voter Registration Day on record. Over 800,000 people updated their registration or registered to vote for the first time. At the same time that so many Americans are involved in ballot box politics, the country is polarized, partisan and politicized. With sharp political differences seemingly not going away any time soon, how do we support robust discussions in our classrooms? How do we support our students to consider issues from immigration to gun control through deliberation and not shouting...

Language Guide for Communicating About Those Involved In The Carceral System

About

Language is not merely descriptive, it is creative. For too long we have borne the burden of having to recreate our humanity in the eyes of those who would have us permanently defined by a system that grew directly out of the institution of American slavery, an institution that depended on the dehumanization of the people it enslaved. It is in this spirit that we, the formerly incarcerated and system-impacted academics who identify as the Berkeley Underground Scholars at the University of California, Berkeley, call on the media, students, and public to utilize the...

ACES

Squeezed on All Sides: Economic Pressures Facing Berkeley Students

Event Description:

According to a July 2017 nation-wide report, 60 percent or more of the total cost of attending a college or university comes from expenses other than tuition, and the cost of living for college students has increased by more than 80 percent over the past 40 years. In a high-cost area such as Berkeley, affordability is especially acute and impacts many aspects of students' lives beyond the financial: housing and food insecurity, commute time, mental and emotional health, the ability to pay for course materials, working for money vs. doing research or taking...

Inviting Students to Bring Themselves to Class: Connecting Learning and Lived Experiences

Event Description

In higher education, we want learning to be relevant to students’ lives, but how often do we explicitly incorporate students’ lives--who they are, what they know, where they come from--into our teaching and research? How do we take an asset-based approach, drawing upon the diversity of Berkeley's student population as well as our own subject matter expertise, to create a richer learning experience for everyone? What does this look like across different disciplines and what's at stake?

Panelists:...

Community Reflections During COVID-19

Event Description

During times of crisis and disruption, it’s natural to default to very practical and immediate concerns. These are important. But as instructors, we also care about our students as people and as members of families and communities facing a multitude of challenges. We want to create conditions for them to thrive, even as we ourselves are learning to adapt to new and unfamiliar challenges. How do we ground ourselves in what’s important for each of us and our values, when everything is being upended? How do we sustain ourselves, meet the ever-changing needs of our students--...

Wikipedia Pedagogy

Teaching & Learning

Less than a decade ago, seventy-percent of instructors noted that they use Wikipedia often, but stated that they would never allow their students to use Wikipedia.1 Now, instructors are shifting their thinking away from Wikipedia as a source for completing assignments, instead of using class materials as a way to improve Wikipedia. All in all, there tends to be a pedagogical shift towards how Wikipedia can enrich traditional teaching and how it can be harnessed as a tool for gaining refined digital literacy skills....