Roshini Ramachandran, Academic Administrator for Curricular Review and Revision, recently published an article in Science Magazine on how seemingly small changes in approaching a class can make a big difference to students. Roshini shares in this story an important lesson learned from an alarming course experience that helped to transform her approach to teaching.
CAT’s Learning Spaces, Design and Maintenance (LSDM) unit completed physical and audio visual system upgrades for the classrooms listed below over the summer. Our Faculty Development team created a downloadable resource guide with information about how instructors can leverage these renovations to take advantage of evidence-based strategies that enhance teaching and learning at the college level.
A multi-disciplinary study of the role of education on food choices and climate impact included our very own Marc Levis-Fitzgerald. He was among a group of UCLA researchers led by Professor Jennifer Ayla Jay, UCLA Civil and Environmental Engineering, who evaluated the impact of education on the reported dietary choices of UCLA freshmen students due to a two-quarter Cluster course. The calculated impact of those choices on the carbon footprint was significant. This research is a testament to the power of collaboration across UCLA, to the students who generously participated, and the role of education in reaching climate change targets. The full publication may be accessed by this link:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-019-02407-8
Abstract
The goal of this study was to evaluate the impact of a two-quarter freshman course series entitled “Food: A Lens for Environment and Sustainability” (Food cluster) on the carbon footprint of food choices by college freshmen attending a large public university in California. Students enrolled in the course completed a baseline questionnaire about their diets in early fall quarter and then again at follow-up, about 6 months later at the end of the winter quarter. The control group consisted of freshmen enrolled in a different course series entitled “Evolution of the Cosmos and Life” (Cosmos cluster). The instruction in the Food cluster included lecture material on general environmental science and life cycle analyses of food, an analysis of a reading comparing the environmental footprint of various types of meats, and classroom exercises to calculate the environmental footprint of typical foods. The Cosmos cluster instruction included climate change, but no information about food. While the two groups were statistically indistinguishable at baseline, throughout the period of the study, Food cluster students decreased (a) their overall dietary carbon footprint for a 2000-kcal normalized diet by 7%(p=0.062), (b) the beef component of their dietary carbon footprint by 19% (p=0.024), and (c) their reported ruminant consumption by 28% (p<0.001). At follow-up, the overall dietary footprints for Food cluster students were 4153 and 5726 g CO2-eq/day for female and male students, respectively, compared to 4943 and 6958 g CO2-eq/day for female and male Cosmos students. In the Food cluster, both genders decreased their reported ruminant meat consumption by about a serving per week, while reported ruminant meat consumption increased for males in the control group. Modest, voluntary dietary changes such as those observed in this study could play an important role in mitigating climate change. Extrapolated across the entire US population, the difference in dietary carbon footprint observed between the Food cluster and control group would amount to 33% of the reduction required for the 2013 President’s Climate Action Plan (2013).
Classroom Technology, Design and Maintenance (CTDM) completed an Audio Visual system upgrade to La Kretz 110.
La Kretz 110 is one of the largest classrooms on the south side of campus with a capacity of 351 seats and was the first auditorium to receive a dual projection system in 2009. Since the room is heavily used by classes and events throughout the year, CTDM technicians had been looking for the appropriate window to upgrade the AV system without having to take the room offline from scheduling.
CTDM found this opportunity during the 2019 Spring Break. The crew worked throughout the week and installed a new digital AV system that was ready for instructors by the first day of Spring Quarter. Upgrades include a new classroom computer with a large touch screen monitor, a rotating document camera that can be accessed from multiple sides of the lectern, and a Blu-ray/DVD player. A new input cubby was also installed that included a HDMI connection as well as the standard VGA cable.
Overall, the new AV system has everything that other, larger auditoriums have received in recent renovations, e.g., Court of Sciences 24, 50, 76; Moore 100; and Haines 39. The ability to upgrade an auditorium’s entire AV system during a one week break is a first for the team and a huge success for CAT’s CTDM.
Three members of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching recently published research relevant to the science of teaching and learning that advances our understanding of effective teaching in STEM fields. These outstanding researchers are Roshini Ramachandran, formerly in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA and now at CAT’s Center for Educational Assessment, Erin M. Sparck, a Postdoc in CEA, and Marc Levis-Fitzgerald, Director of CEA. Their work focused on increasing student engagement and learning in a large general chemistry course. They found that the use of application-based science videos as homework assignments enhanced students’ understanding of key concepts. Their research on effective STEM teaching innovations was published in The Journal of Chemical Education, February 22, 2019, and can be accessed here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00777
The abstract:
“Numerous online resources provide a variety of content for a wide range of STEM topics; however, they tend to function as isolated tidbits that provide content-specific knowledge. Application-based science education videos address the overlooked issue of concept to application by implementing experimental components in their videos and fostering connections with everyday applications. We utilized the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) peer-reviewed science education videos as homework assignments to supplement lectures on the topics of enthalpy, entropy, rate laws, and Le Châtelier’s principle in a second-term general chemistry course. Student learning was assessed through the analysis of pre- and post-video conceptual quizzes, and value surveys were also conducted to gather student feedback about the videos. Our investigation shows that using these videos in the course significantly improved student learning and reinforced conceptual understanding for important foundational concepts, and these results hold even for students who did not feel positively toward the videos.”
The Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT, formerly OID) and CEILS (Center for Education Innovation & Learning in the Sciences) collaborated to host an all-day, campus-wide event, Teaching at UCLA: A Symposium to Showcase Innovation and Inspire Excellence, held on March 6, 2019 at the UCLA Faculty Center. Erin Sanders O’Leary, Director of CEILS, and Adrienne Lavine, Faculty Director of CAT, welcomed the packed room. Our goal was to showcase and celebrate the breadth of teaching innovations across the UCLA campus and to illuminate how, while there are disciplinary differences in learning outcomes and teaching practices, there is much to share and learn from each other. We also highlighted progress across higher education by exposing UCLA attendees to a national leader in the field. The event was a resounding success, with 147 attendees from across the breadth of our campus.
The symposium featured an inspiring keynote talk by Dr. Andrea Greenhoot, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Kansas. She addressed “How Redefining Teaching Can Supercharge Learning.” The event also included 14 lightning talks by UCLA faculty, all of whom have actively engaged in innovative instruction, as well as six 45-minute, hands-on workshops led by UCLA educational leaders. A panel of articulate UCLA students presented their perspectives as learners exposed to current teaching methods in a discussion of teaching practices that best enable them to learn.
Executive Vice Chancellor Scott Waugh spoke briefly at the lunch hour about our new urgency to enhance teaching that improves learning, closes learning outcome gaps, and makes good on the promise of an outstanding education for students now paying an even higher share of the cost of their education. Scott also proudly announced the new name of OID as the Center for the Advancement of Teaching, an organization whose mission he has long championed.
The schedule of events, list of speakers, and links to their talks can be found at https://teaching.ucla.edu/events/teaching-symposium-innovation.
OID provides grant funding to instructors and departments to support curricular experimentation and development that improves undergraduate instruction across campus. There are two types of grants available:
Instructional Improvement Major Grants support innovation, experimentation, and development of undergraduate curricula and pedagogy. The program goal is to improve the quality of undergraduate education through pedagogical experimentation in areas such as student-centered learning, course design, diversity and inclusion in the classroom, and instructional technologies. The program especially values innovations that will have a lasting impact on undergraduate education.
There are two grant cycles per academic year, in Fall and Spring quarters, announced via campuswide calls for proposals. The AY2018-19 IIP Major Grant recipients and their respective proposal titles are these:
| DEPARTMENT | PROPOSAL TITLE | PI(S) |
|---|---|---|
| Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences | Increasing Undergraduate Comprehension of Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluids via Rotating Tank Experiments | Andrew Stewart & Gang Chen |
| Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences | Data Analysis for Climate Science | Neil Berg |
| Chemistry & Biochemistry | Artificially Intelligent Assessment and Learning System for Chem 17 “Preparation for General Chemistry” | Zhao Li & Yung-Ya Lin |
| Chemistry & Biochemistry | Evaluating the impact of learning assistants in an introductory organic chemistry sequence for life science majors | Rachel Prado & Roshini Ramachandran |
| Chemistry & Biochemistry | Assessment of Teaching Practices in Chemistry 153L: A laboratory course on Introduction to Protein Science – What are reasons for the performance gap in the course? Which interventions will help to reduce this gap? | Anne Hong-Hermesdorf |
| Chemistry & Biochemistry | Machine Learning for every chemistry professional | Anastassia Alexandrova |
| Chemistry & Biochemistry | Creating valid, reliable pre- and post-assessment tools to assess students’ abilities to retain, transfer, and apply acid-base chemistry concepts in general chemistry, organic chemistry, and biochemistry | Jennifer Casey, Heather Tienson-Tseng, Al Courey |
| Chemistry & Biochemistry | Utilizing application-based science education videos in an undergraduate chemistry laboratory course for life science majors | Roshini Ramachandran & Jennifer Casey |
| Communication Studies | TV News Archive User Interface Improvement | Francis Steen & Tim Groeling |
| Comparative Literature | Classroom Coding for the Humanities | David MacFadyen |
| Design | p5.js: Developing a Tool for Making Art and Design with Code | Lauren McCarthy |
| Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences | Geophysics Hawaii Volcano Field Trip | Paul Davis |
| Ecology & Evolutionary Biology | Transforming Introduction to Ecology and Behavior into a more active classroom | Daniel Blumstein |
| Ecology & Evolutionary Biology | Using Modern Classroom Technology in a Large, Upper-Division Class “Evolutionary Medicine” | Pamela Yeh, Benison Pang, Jessica Gregg |
| Ecology & Evolutionary Biology | Sustainable Native Gardens | Alison Lipman & Leryn Gorlitsky |
| French & Francophone Studies | Implementing Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs) in the French Language Program at UCLA | Kimberly Jansma & Laurence Denie |
| Integrative Biology & Physiology | Achieving intimate research experience at scale | Roy Wollman |
| Life Sciences Core Education | A Pilot: Mobile All-in-one Virtual Reality computer station used in Laboratory Course Life Sciences LS23L | Gaston Pfluegl |
| Life Sciences Core Education | Enhancing Motivational Predictors of Student Success Across the Introductory Life Sciences Curriculum | Jeffrey Maloy & Erin Sanders O’Leary |
| Musicology | Creating Musical Community (Ethnomusicology/Music/Musicology M103) | Nina Eidsheim & Mark Kligman |
| Musicology | Videotape course: “The Reel Beatles” | David Leaf |
| Physics & Astronomy | Data-driven, Systematic, and Sustainable Transformation of Physics for Life Scientists | Ian McLean, Katsushi Arisaka, Joshua Samani, George Trammell, Elizabeth Mills, Shanna Shaked |
| Physics & Astronomy | Proposal to enhance infrastructure of 180E physics undergraduate lab | Walter Gekelman |
| Psychology | Developing a Tool to Assess the Learning Gains of the Neuroscience Curriculum | William Grisham |
| World Arts & Cultures/Dance | Legislative Theater for Racial Justice | Robert Gordon, Bryonn Bain, David Gere |
OID held its inaugural New Faculty Teaching Engagement (NFTE, pronounced “nifty”) on November 7th, 2018 at the Luskin Conference Center.
All newly appointed faculty and lecturers from the College and professional schools were invited and 41 attended. Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Scott Waugh, Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel Michael Levine, and Dean and Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Pat Turner welcomed the group during lunch and spoke about teaching based on their personal experiences in the classroom and from the perspectives of their current roles.
The program for the half-day event consisted of an interactive workshop on basic pedagogy and teaching at UCLA and a panel of faculty discussing the role of teaching in tenure and promotion, working with TAs, and the inherent rewards of teaching.
The goal of the event was to better prepare new faculty and lecturers to teach at UCLA. Participants had the opportunity to reflect on how they will develop and/or modify courses they are appointed to teach at UCLA and were introduced to a “toolkit” of best teaching practices to help them create inclusive classrooms that will engage students and optimize learning. Participants were also introduced to the demographics of UCLA students and aspects of teaching at UCLA, as they may differ from those at other institutions.
The day ended with a happy hour, where attendees were joined by several deans and Chancellor Gene Block.
The 35th Andrea Rich Night to Honor Teaching was recently organized and produced by the Office of Instructional Development and graciously hosted at the Chancellor’s Residence on the evening of October 25, 2018. Chancellor Block convened the evening by lauding Andrea Rich, the founder of both the Office of Instructional Development and the Distinguished Teaching Awards. He also recognized this year’s winners who represented a broad range of disciplines.
OID’s Faculty Director, Adrienne Lavine, acknowledged the winners and noted the changing conversation at UCLA about the importance of teaching, the emphasis on teaching excellence by campus leaders, and a growing number of pedagogical endeavors among campus units. Support from OID itself for teaching excellence is in higher demand than ever.
The Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching chose winners of distinguished teaching awards in three categories – six senate faculty members, three non-senate faculty members, and five teaching assistants. OID’s Instructional Media Production filmed and edited interviews conducted by OID’s Kumiko Haas and Marc Levis-Fitzgerald into two-minute clips that were shown at the event as each winner was announced and came forward to accept the award and address the assembled audience.
The UCLA Newsroom featured a story about the evening and these amazing teachers whose disciplines cover the entire campus. The winners’ video interviews and others from prior years are also available on the OID website. The awardees’ devotion to teaching and reaching students is deeply touching and serves as a poignant reminder of the purpose of our institution and the many who contribute to its success.
This year, UCLA’s Office of Instructional Development TA Training Program organized the 45th annual conference to provide pedagogical training and resource information to future, new, and continuing TAs. All graduate students were welcome to attend the conference in preparation for future teaching assignments.
Our conference met for two days, September 24th & 25th, 2018 (Monday and Tuesday of Fall Week 0), again this year, offering specialized workshops and panels on topics ranging from lesson planning, grading, and creating inclusive classrooms to preparing teaching portfolios, managing time, and reducing teaching stress. Over 640 people attended, and the average attendee went to about four workshops and special events. This means we checked in people for more than 2,450 seats in workshops, panels, and special events designed to make them more prepared and effective in their roles as TAs. Our conference grew nearly 50% since 2017, and is playing an increasingly vital role in supporting excellence in teaching at UCLA.
The day started with a complimentary breakfast and informative resource fair that connected TAs to campus resources for undergraduate teaching. Then, conference attendees gathered for a keynote to introduce them to UCLA’s undergraduates and their needs. They reconvened to hear from a panel of Distinguished Teaching Award-winning faculty and TAs on Tuesday. Here, they asked questions of the expert instructors who answered questions about how to not only survive the first quarter of teaching, but to excel in their classrooms. The second day finished with complimentary coffee, sweets, and a raffle as participants shared the lessons they learned and networked with fellow TAs from all over campus. Both days offered three 90-minute workshop sessions, with 20 concurrent workshops each session through Monday and 13 concurrent workshops each session through Tuesday.
Sessions focused on important topics such as:
