Liberation through Tension: Flexible and Adaptable Course Design for Post-Pandemic Learning Environments
Julie Moss, Instructional Designer, Berkeley Public Health
Arjun Mehta, Lecturer, Berkeley Public Health
This teaching demonstration explores flexible, inclusive strategies for bridging geographic and time zone gaps in online, hybrid, or web enhanced learning environments. In the post-pandemic era, attitudes about place-based learning have shifted, as students and instructors increasingly expect the flexibility to take leave from campus without breaks in university activities. While this mobility offers liberation—enabling a balance of studies with family, community, or professional commitments—it also creates tensions within traditional structures of college teaching. Grounded in an online program but relevant across formats and disciplines, this session offers practical approaches to navigating these challenges and fostering equitable, meaningful learning.
Peer-mentorship Program Fosters Academic Growth and Teaching Skills in Large STEM Classroom
Jules Winters, Instructional Staff, Integrative Biology
Charlie Doris, Undergraduate Student, Molecular and Cell Biology and Music
Catherine Nguyen, Undergraduate Student, Molecular and Cell Biology
Kim Tran, Undergraduate Student, Molecular and Cell Biology
Michal Shuldman, Teaching Faculty, Integrative Biology
We are excited to highlight the powerful impacts of our large STEM course’s innovative Study Sleuth program. Study Sleuth focuses on students who score below 70% on their first midterm, helping high potential undergraduate students change their academic trajectory. Although open to all ~700 enrolled students each semester, our community-based learning approach has been especially effective in pulling up target students thanks to the skills fostered through peer-based learning and mentoring.
Rising From the Ashes: Rediscovering Resilience Through Community and Reflection
C. Fairrington, Academic Counselor, Educational Opportunity Program
Barika Yuki Burton, Interim Director, Educational Opportunity Program
Jan Carmelo Bautista, Assistant Director, Educational Opportunity Program
The Educational Opportunity Program’s (EOP) unique position on campus allows us to receive direct insights into the experiences of low-income, first-generation and historically underrepresented students at UC Berkeley. In our efforts to support those of our students on Academic Notice (formerly Academic Probation), we launched the Road 2 Resiliency (R2R) seminar, which creates a supportive community and fosters reflective practices that empower students experiencing academic difficulty to collectively explore personal development models and academic/study strategies. Overall, we aim to cultivate a brave and positive learning space that reconnects students with their confidence and supports their holistic success.
Automating Student Support Detection and Course Analysis: Scaling Insights for Course Staff
Edwin Vargas Navarro, Undergraduate Student, Computer, Data Science, and Society
Lisa Yan, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Michael Ball, Lecturer, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
This presentation demonstrates an automated system for identifying and addressing student support needs and centralizing course analytics at the macro and micro level. The system leverages a Slackbot to aggregate data from multiple sources—including the Flextensions software, Gradescope, lecture transcripts, course policies, online forum interactions, and feedback from both students and staff—to promptly alert instructors to emerging concerns. Automating the detection of student support issues will lead to quicker interventions, improved outcomes, and a more equitable learning experience. This allows students to be liberated from the shadows, and have a system in place to make sure they don’t suffer silently.
Amplifying Every Student Voice: Making Real Time Polling Tools Accessible
Lisha Bornilla, Learning Tools Service Lead, Research, Teaching & Learning
Real-time engagement tools like student response systems (SRS) are widely used at Berkeley to track student understanding and foster interaction in the classroom, however accessibility barriers can prevent full participation for students with disabilities. This session explores strategies for making these tools more inclusive, from understanding common challenges to implementing best practices that support all learners. By focusing on improving accessibility, we can create more equitable learning environments that enhance student participation and engagement across diverse student needs. Participants will gain practical insights and concrete strategies to designing engagement activities that ensure every student’s voice is heard.
Collaborating Around AI: A Student-Athlete & Peer Tutor’s Perspective on Why Effective Education in the “Cognitive Age” Should Place a Premium on Collaboration
Evan Gold, Undergraduate Student, Integrative Biology
AI poses a unique challenge for educational participants. While it is understood that AI should be used as a tool to foster critical thinking, the prevailing mechanisms for this aim take the form of regulations: “Don’t use AI to Cheat”. In questioning the ways in which educational participants can promote the aim of a more developmental use of AI from the perspective of a peer-tutor and member of a differentially motivated student-athlete community, the answer seems evident: Teaching collaboration between students both promotes more active engagement and the skills needed to effectively collaborate with AI to enhance learning.
Cognitive Interventions for Holistic Wellness & Academic Success
Belinda Kremer, Lecturer, College Writing Programs
This presentation briefly summarizes credible research on both the “mental health crisis” among college students and short-term cognitive interventions for wellness, then describes using this research in R4B as a case study in “theoretical”/pure and applied research/outcomes. It narrates a Spring 2025 experiential and semi-ethnographic approach to learning that simultaneously promotes the validity of self-care, particularly short-term interventions for emotional regulation: Students are exposed to a set of no-cost, universally accessible short-term cognitive interventions in class, practice them outside of class in a loose self-study, and reflect on their experiences. Short-term cognitive intervention examples will be provided.
Interrupting AI: How to Teach Resistance in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Classroom
Angela Hume, Lecturer, College Writing Programs
In the spirit of humanistic inquiry and liberatory political movement, I will encourage us to ask questions that will help us learn and teach about how to interrupt AI. Indeed, I argue that we should approach AI with a pedagogy of interruption as opposed to integration. My presentation will unfold this argument. Additionally, I will present sample activities from an “Interrupting AI” unit that I developed and piloted in my own interdisciplinary reading and composition classroom.
Liberation Through Analysis: Defining a New Relationship to Automatic Writing
Margaret Kolb, Lecturer, Engineering
Students are inundated with different tools that can write for them, from the academic guidelines specific to each discipline, to auto-complete, to Chat GPT. In my interdisciplinary Art of Writing seminar, “Writing Robots,” my students and I ask how we can write about—as well as with—automatic writing tools. These questions necessitate my own reimagining, as a teacher and a writer, of the writing I assign to the course’s multi-disciplinary students. In this lightning round presentation, I showcase these assignments, which vary by length, format, and audience.