UC Berkeley | RTL Commons

CTL Partners and Impact

Creating Meaningful Learning Together

The Center for Teaching and Learning partners with units across campus to bridge expertise, cultivate meaningful and effective teaching experiences, and transform the classroom experience through collective care. This page documents the partnerships core to our mission and maps the impacts of those partnerships on the campus teaching and learning community.

Partnership Profiles & Impact

Active Learning Classrooms

Partner(s): Office of the Registrar (Kelly Mann, Rosa Baiza); Classroom Technology Services (Ezra Daly, Kelly Chang)

  • What We Do: The CTL's partnership with the Office of the Registrar reflects a shared interest in making the most of the limited number of ALCs we have on campus. With only six ALCs, decisions about which instructors are assigned to these spaces carry pedagogical weight. Our partnership has helped us be more intentional about the relationship between access and instructional development, ensuring that ALC assignments are made equitably, while also creating pathways for instructors to receive the support they need to teach ambitiously in these spaces.
  • The Impact:
    • Revised application process
    • New meeting cadence for supporting partnership
    • ALC SiG?[2-3 pieces of relevant data we’d like to include about demonstrable impact on faculty/students]

AI Valued Learning Outcomes Development

Partner(s): [insert names of campus partners here]

  • What We Do: [2-3 sentence description of what this partnership looks like]
  • The Impact:
    • [2-3 pieces of relevant data we’d like to include about demonstrable impact on faculty/students]

Arts & Humanities Testing Center Pilot Program

Partner(s): This project is sponsored by the Division of Arts & Humanities (A&H) and the Division of Undergraduate Education (VPUE) in partnership with the Disabled Students’ Program (DSP) and the Berkeley Language Center (BLC).

  • What We Do: The A&H Testing Center pilot was launched in Spring 2025 to expand capacity for paper-based proctored exams and to provide a centralized, accessible testing option for instructors and students. The pilot also served as a proof of concept for scalable, cross-unit collaboration supporting disability access and inclusive assessment practices.
  • The Impact:
    • The pilot demonstrates strong early growth and adoption. Instructor participation increased from 12 to 23 (approximately 92% growth), while exam volume rose from 53 to about 70–73 exams. Together, these trends indicate meaningful demand for the service and successful integration into departmental workflows.

Berkeley Changemaker Course Design and Development

Partner(s): Berkeley Changemaker

  • What We Do: CTL partnered with Berkeley Changemaker to develop a fully online course, "Openness to Opposing Views". The course emphasizes the Berkeley Changemaker themes of critical thinking, effective communication and productive collaboration.
  • The Impact:
    • For students enrolled in Fall 2025, learners saw a:
      • Thirteen-point increase in strong agreement with the willingness to have conversations with individuals holding strong opposing views.
      • Twelve-point increase in strong agreement with the idea that listening to opposing viewpoints was informative.
    • Over 4000 UC Berkeley faculty, staff and alumni took a noncredit version of the course in fall 2025.
    • In summer 2026, 300 community college students took the noncredit course as part of an initiative to expand the Changemaker curriculum to the CCC system.

Beyond the Frame Film Series

Partner(s): CTL, Disability Access and Compliance (DAC); Disability Cultural Community Center (DCC)

  • What We Do: "Beyond the Frame: Amplifying Disability Stories" is an established, highly impactful, fully accessible film event hosted at UC Berkeley. The project is a cross-departmental collaborative effort between Disability Access and Compliance (DAC), the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), and the Disability Cultural Community Center (DCC). The project is led by: Tara Mason (CTL); Steve Johnston (DAC); Rachel Marks (DCC); and Ann Wai Yee Kwong (DCC)
  • The Impact: The event aims to elevate neurodivergent and disabled voices, foster perspective-expanding dialogue, and set a gold standard for campus event accessibility where the event is proactively built with accessibility in mind and also has a range of responsive efforts to accommodate individuals needing any unique supports to promote their access to the event. The success of the event is highlighted by Beyond the Frame now working with Pixar Animation Studios and hosting Accessible Premieres of “Hoppers” in February 2026, and planning “Gatto” in March 2027 at UC Berkeley.
  • Event webpage: https://dac.berkeley.edu/events/beyond-frame-film-event

Beyond the Syllabus Conversation Series

Partner(s): Student Learning Center

  • What We Do: "Beyond the Syllabus” is a conversation series designed to bring faculty and undergraduate students together in conversation outside the classroom. By supporting faculty and students in harboring a deeper understanding of each other’s lived teaching and learning experiences, instructors and students find deeper connection to each other and, ultimately, develop a more humanized understanding of what it means to teach and learn together.
  • The Impact:
    • In qualitative feedback received after the event was completed, student and faculty respondents shared the following:
      • Student: “I think hearing about a challenge a professor experienced teaching a big class was the most memorable moment to me, and it made me realize how much our words impact others.”
      • Student: “It was so cool to talk casually with a professor. When I go to office hours, there is a pressure to have good questions and make good use of their time. Here, it felt like we could be open.”
      • Faculty: “Hearing student perspective for the prompt “ What do you wish faculty better understood about your experience at Berkeley?” I will keep those stories in mind while planning my next lesson or assignment.”

CDSS Certificate Development

Partner(s): College of Computing, Data Science and Society

  • What We Do: CTL helped CDSS create and launch accessible online courses on edX.
  • The Impact:
    • CTL provided instructional design support, including an accessibility review to ensure that the courses met WCAG standards and were in compliance with the requirements of the Consent Decree.
    • Courses enrolled over 13,000 edX learners, furthering UC Berkeley’s mission to serve society as a center of higher learning.

CERC-AIR AI Learning Tools Assessment

Partner(s): Representatives of CERC and other campus units

  • What We Do: CTL representatives participate on the CERC-AIR Subcommittee. The subcommittee's purpose is to provide risk assessment and risk mitigation advice to Berkeley units, departments, schools and colleges by reviewing proposed new AI tools or new uses of existing tools.

DSP Faculty Liaisons Program

Partner(s): Senate faculty at UC Berkeley, Tina Chow & Justin Davidson work intermittently with CTL colleagues to support faculty development that centers disability and inclusive instruction.

  • What We Do: DSP Faculty Liaisons are faculty colleagues who can provide information about DSP policies and how to effectively navigate the interactive process to their faculty colleagues. Liaisons collaborate and build bridges in understanding faculty challenges with campus partners such as CTL, DSP, and DAC.
  • The Impact: From Justin, “There isn't one standardized teacher training system for faculty. Everyone comes to Berkeley as a professor, either from being a grad student or from being faculty elsewhere. And it's all different. That's what surprised me the most. And the journey has really taught me that with such a big university and with such a heterogeneous faculty, in terms of their prior experience, it's taught me that this position [DSP Liasion] is really important because, as faculty, we really are responsible for upholding the law when it comes to providing accommodations. And so if faculty don't have the support and the training to help them do that, then it can be a real problem,” (Finding Space Podcast, Episode 2).
  • DSP faculty liaisons webpage: https://teaching.berkeley.edu/resources/instructor-guide-dsp-accommodations/dsp-faculty-liaisons

Equity-Oriented Advising and Coaching Program

Partner(s): Advising Strategy + Training

  • What We Do: Campus advisors come together to learn about approaches to equity-oriented advising practices. Through weekly gatherings, advisors learn about approaches where they listen authentically to diverse students’ needs, attending to their lived experiences through a framework of humility and empathy.
  • The Impact:
    • [2-3 pieces of relevant data we’d like to include about demonstrable impact on faculty/students]

Finding Space Podcast

Partner(s): RTL Commons Media + Communications

  • What We Do: We produce three podcast episodes each semester as part of a storytelling and outreach initiative that engages faculty, staff, and students across campus through an additional accessible medium. The podcast features UC Berkeley students, educators, and staff from the disability community sharing their stories and perspectives on disability justice and advocacy. It also serves as a way to share resources, updates, and accessibility practices with the broader campus community.
  • The Impact: The Finding Space podcast is contributing to a shift in campus culture by amplifying disability community voices and bringing conversations on accessibility and disability justice into a more public and accessible format. Through storytelling with UC Berkeley students, educators, and staff, the podcast increases awareness of lived experiences and fosters deeper engagement among faculty and the broader campus community. It serves as an ongoing medium for expanding dialogue, challenging assumptions, and supporting a more inclusive approach to serving students with disabilities.

Solid Foundations Math Readiness Assessment

Partner(s): [insert names of campus partners here]

  • What We Do: [2-3 sentence description of what this partnership looks like]
  • The Impact:
    • [2-3 pieces of relevant data we’d like to include about demonstrable impact on faculty/students]

Summer Sessions Course Support

Partner(s): Summer Sessions

  • What We Do: CTL partners with Summer Sessions to provide instructional design support for online summer courses. CTL developed the Strategies for Designing Online Courses training site as a comprehensive resource to guide instructors through the process of building or rerunning an online course. Instructional designers also provide individualized consultations to help instructors set up and deliver effective online learning experiences.
  • The Impact:
    • Over 60 online Summer Sessions courses utilize CTL-designed bCourses templates grounded in best practices in online course design, supporting a seamless learning experience for thousands of students each year.
    • CTL's Strategies for Designing Online Courses training site continues to serve as a foundational resource for Summer Sessions instructors, providing guidance on course structure, accessibility, and student engagement.
    • [Include instructor quote or anything from evaluation data?]

Teaching and Working in Troubled Times

Partner(s): American Cultures Center, Division of Equity & Inclusion

  • What We Do: Teaching and Working in Troubled Times (formerly “Teaching in Troubled Times”) started with an awareness that dramatically altering political circumstances were creating unprecedented teaching and learning circumstances. The American Cultures Center, hosting the campus graduation requirement centered on issues of social justice across a majority of UC Berkeley departments and disciplines, understood the necessity of a gathering space for building conversation for AC teaching faculty around pressing social issues. Such pressing social issues are not contained within the AC curriculum, and shortly the TWTT program became a powerful partnership of the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Division of Equity and Inclusion.
  • The Impact: Since 2017, TWTT has offered more than 18 dialogues featuring local and national experts on urgent issues in higher education, culminating in a repository of recorded panel discussions, recommendations, and panelist-curated resources.
    • “I loved how the moderator oriented the questions to the student experience and the challenges that arise in the classroom… I felt inspired, encouraged, and proud of so many caring and thoughtful people reinforcing the values that we all share.” Participant Testimonial, April 2026

UC DEIA Module Development

Partner(s):

  • What We Do: [2-3 sentence description of what this partnership looks like]
  • The Impact:
    • [2-3 pieces of relevant data we’d like to include about demonstrable impact on faculty/students]