Content Readiness Workshops

The purpose of these workshops is to strengthen your understanding of core math, chemistry, and physics topics, build a community with your peers, and allow you to be active and engage with the workshop materials. In addition, the topics are identified as fundamental prior knowledge you’ll need to be successful in your current and future math, chemistry, and physics courses at UC San Diego.

The Commons Academic Achievement Hub has designed these sessions to be highly engaging and are facilitated by our experienced content tutors. From the drop-down menu by subject please find a selection of topics to support your success. You may select any one or multiple sessions to attend in each discipline based upon your strengths and needs. See the calendar below for the dates and times of these workshops. Please see the toolbar for workshop registration and platform details.

Why do students utilize Workshops?

“[The workshop] was a nice review and the problems helped me cement my understanding”
“Presenter really wanted us to learn which made me even more motivated to do well”
“[The workshop] helped [me] think about problems from a different angle and pace myself when doing problems”

The Academic Achievement Hub offers workshops for the following subject areas:

How to Learn for Programming

Learn strategies to be efficient with your time and successful as you learn how to program in your courses.

Throughout this workshop, students will:

Learn to take effective notes on coding concepts
Be able to develop your own examples based on code given in lectures
Learn techniques to properly organize and reference your lecture notes and comments in your code
Developing skills to troubleshoot errors in your code

How to Learn for Organic Chemistry

Learn strategies to be efficient with your time and successful in your Organic Chemistry series.

Throughout this workshop, students will:

Practice effective strategies to engage with organic chemistry concepts
Recognize the multiple levels of complexity that are present in all material/assessments
Identify the foundational concepts needed for Organic Chemistry

“Mastering Geometry for Math and Physics”

An interactive workshop that brings you activities to practice, review, and master your geometry knowledge needed in your current and future math and physics courses.

This workshop will:

Build critical thinking skills needed to problem-solve and interpret results
Build on your visual representation skills

Come practice breaking down word problems including:

Calculating area, perimeter, and volume
Triangles and trigonometry
Calculating distance within a 2D plane and using the Pythagorean Theorem

Chemistry Workshops

Interactive workshops that revisit topics needed to understand concepts for success in the General Chemistry series and/or your current course.

The following are the list of workshops for Chemistry:

Reaction Stoichiometry: Using Reaction Stoichiometry to determine the quantitative values produced or consumed in a reaction, as well as the limiting reactant and the amount of excess reagent left over.
Periodic Trends: Understanding periodic Trends and the behavior of Atoms and Electrons by constructing the Periodic Table.
Quantum Numbers and Electron Configurations: Determine the set of Quantum Numbers for any given electrons in an atom, identify an element from its last quantum number, and write the electron configurations of transition metals and their respective ions.
Bonding Models and Theories: Understand bonding models and theories in order to draw and identify orbital hybridization, molecular geometry, and molecular orbital diagrams
ICE Tables: practice ICE table problem-solving skills and will support the development of critical thinking skills.
Lewis and Resonance Structures: Drawing Lewis and Resonance Structures to determine the most likely structures based on stability and formal charge