In 1999, the highly respected and often-emulated Professional Development Program (PDP) at U.C. Berkeley celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. PDP provides a program of comprehensive academic support, the best known component of which is the special workshop model developed at PDP. The original PDP workshop was created as a means of addressing the low achievement of African Americans and Latinos in the introductory calculus course required of students planning to major in science, math, engineering or technological fields. The workshop–with its challenging problem sets, specially trained Graduate Student Instructors, and emphasis on collaborative learning–provided the students with an opportunity to go into much greater depth in calculus in their freshman year than would otherwise have been the case, and to develop strong peer-support networks. The workshop provided students with a strong foundation in math, taught them how to work hard and productively on their coursework, and gave them the skills and inspiration to create peer study groups in their future classes. Also, the success of the program helped dispel negative stereotypes (among students and faculty members) about the capacity of underrepresented minority students to perform at high levels.

In the intervening years, this successful model has been adopted in math and science courses for all kinds of students with all kinds of backgrounds, with equally impressive results. The Math Department has expanded the use of the PDP model to encompass all of the sections of nearly all the courses in the engineering and science track. The usual two hours of discussion section per week have been replaced by three hours of workshop in which students work in groups on hard and challenging problems. The role of the Graduate Student Instructor has changed from walking the students through homework problems to circulating among the groups of students, asking and answering questions and keeping the groups focused in the right direction. This is a much more active learning experience, based on the model developed by Math Professor Uri Treisman for PDP, as described above. The Math Department is also building on the existing model, adding enhancements such as computer labs employing the same principle of active learning and curricular materials (developed in cooperation with an engineering faculty member) incorporating real-world applications of mathematics.

Similarly, the Physics Department has begun relying more and more on a PDP model for its sections in the lower-division course sequences. In 1996-97 the discussion sections in the Physics 7 sequence (Physics for Scientists and Engineers) were converted to workshops. In 1998-99 the Department decided to make the workshop model available to all students taking the Physics 8 sequence (Introductory Physics, taken by pre-med students, among others) as well. With the support of a National Science Foundation grant, the professor of the course and one of his best GSI’s developed a set of worksheets based on the principles underlying the PDP model. As the Professor, Bruce Birkett, explains,

The main idea is to give students the chance to practice hard (exam-level) questions for themselves while in section, with help from the GSI as needed. The thrust of what goes on in section has thus shifted from the instructor teaching to the students learning. (As I like to say, the goal is not for the GSIs to prove that they know the material, but rather to help the students make it their own.) We do hope that the students are working collaboratively while they're in section–since we know that many learn well that way–and so we try to write problems that are more difficult than an average student will be able to do on his or her own. And because these sections now meet for two hours, we can go a lot more in depth into things than we could under the old one-hour section format.

For now, these workshops (or "extended review sections") are optional, just as they were in the trial period for the current Physics 7 sequence. It is likely that after trying out the workshops for a couple of years (and analyzing the results), all of the discussion sections of Physics 8 will be converted to the two-hour workshop format.

Ideally, good teaching practices will spread throughout a university, and one way to promote their dissemination is by inviting faculty members to share their best practices in forums and panel presentations attended by other faculty members. In the section on research, above, we covered one such panel presentation, chaired by Executive Vice Chancellor Carol Christ, on the use of instructional technology in freshman seminars. Here we will mention just two other such presentations that took place at Berkeley in 1998-99. In spring 1999, former Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien chaired an event entitled "Reinventing Undergraduate Education: Technology Enhanced Learning in the Sciences, Math and Engineering." Inspired by the report of the Boyer Commission, on which Chancellor Tien served, this event provided an occasion for discussion of one of the Boyer recommendations, i.e. "the best teachers and researchers should be thinking about how to design courses in which technology enriches teaching rather than substitutes for it." The panelists, Chemistry Professor Angelica Stacy, Statistics Professor Philip Stark, and Engineering Professors Michael Frenklach and Panos Papadopoulos, presented examples of successful technology-enhanced learning environments. Also in spring 1999, the Instructional Technology Program presented the first in a series of presentations entitled "Demystifying Technology for Teaching." The first presentation gave faculty members the opportunity to learn about QuickTime VR. Faculty and staff presenters (including Anthropology Professor Ruth Tringham, highlighted above in the technology section) demonstrated and discussed the instructional applications of the technology. All of these presentations were very well attended by faculty from across the campus.

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