Teaching Excellence Colloquium

Sharing Knowledge, Inspiring Teaching

Description

The yearlong Teaching Excellence Colloquium for faculty new to Berkeley will provide participants with the knowledge, tools, and inspiration to achieve Berkeley's high expectations for teaching excellence while benefiting from becoming part of a cohort of new faculty peers with shared perspectives across many disciplines. The colloquium kickoff will be followed by monthly workshops emphasizing various aspects of teaching and learning at all levels, and offers faculty the unique opportunity to form small groups to explore a shared teaching interest and conduct peer observations of classroom teaching. Faculty participants will also be introduced to innovative teaching programs such as Berkeley's famous Freshman Seminars, Discovery Courses, Big Ideas courses, and our undergraduate research programs. 

Goals

In order to instill a sense of excellence in teaching as an important campus value, the colloquium will:

  1. Be exposed to the teaching and learning culture at Berkeley.
  2. Develop networks with other Berkeley faculty.
  3. Learn about campus infrastructure and resources for teaching and learning.
  4. Learn about, discuss and reflect upon a framework for teaching excellence at Berkeley.
  5. Develop a community of colleagues around enhancing teaching excellence.
  6. Identify one or more evidence-based strategies to implement in your course to support student learning.

Participation

Faculty who participate throughout the year will be provided a course-improvement grant of $2000 and a letter from their Dean in support of their next merit review.

Peer Observations

Through TEC, faculty typically have the unique opportunity to observe a campus Distinguished Teaching Award recipient in the classroom, as well as have a program facilitator and pedagogy subject matter expert observe their own teaching in the classroom to help ground program topics in personal practice.

Program Schedule

Topics for the monthly meetings are designed to highlight evidence-based teaching and learning strategies, including the science of how students learn, effective course (re)design, student engagement, active learning, assessing student learning in high- and low-stakes contexts, aligning relevant technologies to your instruction, and more. Faculty will engage with each topic in the context of remote teaching and learning and identify one or more of these strategies that they might adapt in their fall or spring semester course.

Please see below for the meeting dates.

Fall 2020:

Kickoff and Orientation to Teaching Excellence @ UC Berkeley
August 24 | 12:00pm – 2:00pm

September 25 | 12:00-1:30pm

October 16 | 12:00-1:30pm

November 20 | 12:00-1:30pm

December 11 | 12:00-1:30pm

Spring 2021:

January 22 | 12:00-1:30pm

February 19 | 12:00-1:30pm

March 19 | 12:00-1:30pm

April 23 | 12:00-1:30pm

TEC is facilitated by the Center for Teaching and Learning, and sponsored by the College of Letters & Science and the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education.

The Teaching Excellence Colloquium

"Hearing the questions and experiences of other new faculty each month was always valuable. Every time, I learned things about Berkeley and teaching issues and how to deal with them that I had never even thought of, but have since referred back to as I begin to encounter them or try to stave them off myself."

- TEC participant

"It was really great to have the intentional space to reflect on teaching. The course I taught in the fall was really out of my realm, and I appreciated being able to converse with colleagues about what I was experiencing. I did some course correcting due to the sessions and have learned many lessons (both from teaching and having the TEC space) that will shape the course in its next iteration."

- TEC participant