Building Classroom and Organizational Structure Around Positive Cultural Values

Abstract

The Compass Project is a self-formed group of graduate and undergraduate students in the physical sciences at UC Berkeley. Our goals are to improve undergraduate physics education, provide opportunities for professional development, and increase retention of students-especially those from populations typically underrepresented in the physical sciences. Compass fosters a diverse, collaborative student community by providing a wide range of services, including a summer program and fall/spring seminar courses. We describe Compass's cultural values, discuss how community members are introduced to and help shape those values, and demonstrate how a single set of values informs the structure of both our classroom and organization.We emphasize that all members of the Compass community participate in, and benefit from, our cultural values, regardless of status as student, teacher, or otherwise.

arXiv comment4 pages, to be submitted to PERC 2012 proceedings

References in corpus (1)

• Learning about non-Newtonian fluids in a student-driven classroom

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• Uncertainty Analysis for a Simple Thermal Expansion Experiment
• Informal physics programs as communities of practice: How can program structures support university students' identities?