The mission of the Center for Teaching and Learning is to enrich, promote, and support teaching and learning effectiveness in the areas of pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment. The assessment process combines introspection, outreach, and the utilization of both qualitative and quantitative methods to improve teaching, curriculum, and student advising. CTL supports both individual instructors and academic units and programs. CTL partners with DH at Berkeley to support digital humanities courses on campus and shape the program’s curriculum as a whole. Though several CTL offerings are faculty only, Graduate Student Instructors can take advantage of similar programs and grants at the GSI Teaching & Resource Center.
Services & Programs
CTL offers several programs to facilitate individual instructor growth. Faculty can take advantage of consultation, classroom observation, and videotaping by CTL consultants. Several instructors also welcome colleagues to their class for peer observation through the Open Classrooms Initiative.
CTL also supports a variety of peer-to-peer learning communities, such as Quality Circles for Teaching, where a small group of three to four faculty members gather for regular conversation and feedback. Berkeley faculty and staff can also subscribe to Teach-net mailing list to pose questions to a larger community of Berkeley instructors. Faculty who are new to the Berkeley campus may participate in the Teaching Excellence Colloquium, a two-semester program of monthly workshops.
Grants and Fellowships
CTL facilitates several grant programs and fellowships that target pedagogy and program assessment at varying scales. These range from the Instructional Improvement Grants, which fund small projects to improve existing courses or develop new courses, to Presidential Chair Fellows, a grant program for faculty teams undertaking curricular revision or the introduction of new curricular components at the department or program level. CTL also offers several fellowships that are based in program assessment, including the Graduate Student Assessment Fellows Program and the Advising Council Fellows Program for staff members. Such programs focus on training graduate students and faculty to effectively evaluate undergraduate student learning on the Berkeley campus, training which is useful for instructors employed in any type of educational program. Members of the digital humanities community at Berkeley are encouraged to take advantage of these resources in addition to DH at Berkeley’s funding opportunities for new courses and new course components in the digital humanities.
Online Resources
Not sure where to get started? CTL offers many online resources for instructors and programs. Instructors can peruse teaching resources covering topics such as course design, syllabus development, lecturing, co-teaching, and rubrics. At the program level, CTL offers resources on assessment and evaluation covering topics such as data gathering for evaluation and curriculum maps.