Teaching at Scale Through Ayudantías Solidarias

Two sessions reached more than 250 students each: an online intermediate Excel workshop built around real-world cases and an in-person Mathematical Methods III session on optimization in the university’s Aula Magna.

Context

At the Faculty of Economics and Business of Universidad de Chile, Ayudantías Solidarias are voluntary academic support sessions organized shortly before midterms or final exams.

Unlike regular exercise sessions, they are not part of a teaching assistant’s assigned responsibilities. Each is an additional, one-off session intended to help students organize difficult material, resolve common questions, and approach an upcoming assessment with greater confidence.

I chose to lead these sessions across several semesters because teaching, for me, is not limited to completing the formal responsibilities of a course. My aim was to make technical ideas more accessible and give students methods they could continue using beyond the next exam.

Two Sessions at Scale

Excel and Data Applications

In 2025, I led an online session for more than 250 first-year students enrolled in Aplicación y Manejo de Datos.

The workshop covered intermediate Excel techniques through practical exercises based on real-world situations. Rather than teaching isolated functions, I connected each tool with the broader process of organizing, analyzing, and interpreting data.

Optimization and Mathematical Methods

I also taught an in-person session for more than 250 second-year students taking Mathematical Methods III.

Held in the university’s Aula Magna, the session guided students through optimization problems and the reasoning required to approach them systematically.

Teaching at Scale

Seeing so many students attend was inspiring, but presenting to groups of that size was also intimidating.

Preparing and leading these sessions pushed me to manage my nerves, structure explanations carefully, and communicate technical material clearly to a large and diverse audience.

The most important outcome, however, was not becoming more comfortable with public speaking. It was being able to introduce hundreds of students to techniques, connections, and ways of approaching problems that many had not encountered before.

What I Took from the Experience

These sessions reinforced my understanding of teaching as more than preparation for a particular assessment.

A successful review session should help students perform better in the short term, but it should also leave them with tools they can reuse in later courses, professional work, and unfamiliar problems.

That is what I hope students took away from these Ayudantías Solidarias—and why I continued volunteering to lead them semester after semester.