From Fall 2013 to Spring 2015, I was one of the instructors for the decal (democratic education program at UC Berkeley) course "Leadership and Justice: The Knowledge for Human Rights" that taught human rights issues, theories, and solutions to undergraduate UC Berkeley students.
Problem
In this mixed classroom of students from different backgrounds, experience, and knowledge, how do we create an optimal learning environment where students of all backgrounds have access to equal opportunities and outcomes for academic achievement? As a human-rights course, our goal was to enable each student to succeed equally, despite background and learning differences.
As VP of Leadership Development, my task was to research and strengthen pedagogy guidelines for the instructor team so that we may effectively bridge the gap among students in the class.
PROCESS
Step 1: User (Student) Research
At the beginning of each semester, I administer ethnographic and participatory surveys to understand the backgrounds of the students who make up the class.
Then, for each weekly 2 hour classroom session, the instructor team alternated between specific multimodal, democratic, assessment-driven, and gamified instructional strategies to identify which strategies helped the most students learn.
To evaluate these strategies, students took pre- and post-assessment surveys. At the beginning of each class, students wrote down their current knowledge and experience of the subject material, and at the end of the class, students then describe their current understanding of the material along with a rating out of 7 for class facilitation.
In total, the sources of data for classroom evaluation included instructor observations, student surveys, and student interviews.
Step 2: IDENTIFICATION OF PROBLEMS
Student feedback helped us identify problems with the classroom and instructional methods. We sought to understand each student's needs and preferences for their preferred classroom environment. For example, we learned that on average, students preferred that class consist of approximately 71% lecture. They also preferred multi model approaches to learning and problem-posing discussions after lecture.
Step 3: IMPLEMENTATION
The result is a transformed classroom where students and instructors co-create the learning environment: at the beginning of each semester, students develop classroom rules and guidelines to transform the classroom into a community. We implement a multimodal, assessment-driven, and gamified pedagogy to help address diverse student needs and their preferred modes of learning. We include options that auditory, kinetic, visual, or any other type of learner may demonstrate his or her participation.
Simultaneously, weekly surveys allow students to voice their concerns and allow us to continuously adjust course curriculum to increase every student's engagement and performance during class.
Every semester, we observed increasing average course ratings (eventually achieving 7/7) and A-level final projects from all students, regardless of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, background knowledge, immigration status, etc.
Our Leadership and Instructor Team
