UC Berkeley Teaching Methodology

As an Industrial Engineering student and working for some years in startups and accelerators, I listened very often about the Bay Area’s innovation ecosystem. The vital part of an innovation ecosystem is surely the universities, where new technologies are created, people build strong networking and the knowledge is replied to the future generations. Therefore, listening/reading about UC Berkeley and Stanford is common when this is the subject.

Before coming to Berkeley, I always thought that teaching methodologies used on UC Berkeley would be something magical and applying unimaginable tools. However, when embedded within this environment, I realized that this famous “special sauce” on the teaching method has its structure based much more on setting up of a mindset together with providing common entrepreneurial tools.

The main point is that a mindset is not “created from nothing” and taught in classrooms. It’s about practicing every day, applying everywhere and sharing with everyone. That’s where teaching methodologies make all the difference.

Almost all my classes are 3 hours long, once a week. Thinking about 3-hour classes, it seems like tiring. However, in the way it’s conducted, it’s exactly the opposite. The classes usually are divided into 1 hour the professor teaching something new, then a little break, the next hour all the students get together in groups and work applying what they just learned. Then, at the end of the class, the professor and groups discuss the main takeaways.
Entrepreneurial skills are developed only with practice. That’s why UC Berkeley’s teaching way is so different and it has such positive results. Every class students learn something and apply it. It’s totally different from a professor talking all the class and students just listening (as it commonly on teaching methods).

Moreover, students practice the called soft skills every day. In each group dynamic and each discussion, they know each other better, talk with different people and knows different ways t think about everything. This way, students are improving their communication, cultural, analytical and networking skills. When made almost every day, it became a habit and the results are students much more innovative, thinking outside the box, communicate their ideas better and without fear. It makes the total difference.

In addition, students here have group projects almost every class. At least in SCET’s classes, almost all based on developing a business around an idea or technology. One thing that I feel here is that the challenges proposed by the professors to the students are very high-level challenges. Berkeley professors really have strong confidence that their students will be able to accomplish what they are asking them to do. Even being very difficult, in the end, all the groups find a way and do the assignment (even assignments based on developing a software in 2 weeks). That makes the total difference on teaching methodologies and its results. Because students face big challenges from the beginning when they reach the market or start their entrepreneurial lives, they are prepared to get into really big challenges.

All the mindset idea, mixed with the value of group work and encouragement of great discussions, brings some ideas and pieces of knowledge that are commonly already known by professors worldwide. However, applying it every day and changing the teaching methodology from traditional structure to a more dynamic structure is not that simple. Nevertheless, being studying at Berkeley, learning from its methodology and following all results that are happening, I can say that UC Berkeley found the way to start this revolution of teaching methodology and universities from all over the world should pay attention and learn from them.

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