2026 Concurrent Breakout Sessions

Breakout session details and descriptions

“The Weight of the Degree: Rigor, Responsibility, and the Modern Campus”
Presented by the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning
Friday, September 25, 2026
David Rubenstein Treehouse, Harvard University

Relevant 2026 HILT Conference pages:

 

Morning Breakout Sessions 10:30am - 11:30am

The morning breakouts offer a deep dive into the immediate, practical tools and creative strategies defining today’s evolving classrooms. Led by peers from across the university, these concurrent sessions focus on actionable design. Whether you are looking to catch rapid-fire AI use cases, prototype new tech tools with clear pedagogical purpose, modernize your media content to meet students where they are, foster inclusive teacher training, or engineer healthier dynamics for student teams, these workshops will equip you with concrete practices to bring back to your own courses.

AI Authenticity in Teaching: A Process, Not a Best Practice 

This session introduces the concept of AI Authenticity — an ongoing, reflective pedagogical process of aligning AI use with student development, instructional values, and discipline-specific learning goals. Rather than offering prescriptive "best practices," AI Authenticity invites instructors and the teams that support them to ask critical questions about how AI affects learning in their specific context. Participants will explore a structured process to answer key questions and see practical examples of AI Authenticity in action across Harvard. The session will give faculty, staff, and students tools for “riding the wave” of the ever-changing landscape of AI in teaching and learning across domains.

Organizers/Speakers:

  • Mae Klinger, Associate Director of Teaching and Learning Innovation (HKS)
  • Karina Lin-Murphy, Associate Director, Course Design and Pedagogical Innovation (HBS-CCTL)
  • Allison Pingree, Director of Instructional Support and Development, HGSE Teaching and Learning Lab (HGSE)

AI Lightning Rounds

In this interactive, one-hour breakout session, you’ll experience a fast-paced series of lightning talks that showcase how AI is being meaningfully integrated into teaching, learning, and academic support across Harvard. Each presenter has just three minutes to highlight a specific AI integration, innovation, or intervention—from classroom practice and course design to advising, assessment, and large-scale platforms—followed by dedicated time for your questions and deeper dives. Presentations:

  • “Advisor: How Harvard Business Publishing is Embedding AI into the Educator Workflow” by Mike Petroff, Senior Director, Product Management (HBP)
  • “AI Avatars for Low-Stakes Practice: A 3-Minute Look at Scalable Communication Training” by Ami Kobayashi, Research Fellow in Neurology (HMS)
  • “A Targeted Use of AI Tutoring That Improves Durable Learning and Narrows the Gap — A Two-Year Controlled Study” by Greg Kestin, Associate Director of Science Education (FAS)
  • “Collage-AI for Project-Based Learning: Supporting Student Preparation and Deeper Learning in AP50” by Kelly Miller, Senior Lecturer on Applied Physics (SEAS)
  • “GenAI-Guided Practice in a Writing Course” by Katherine Porter, Product Manager (HUIT) and Stephanie Wooler, Instructional Design Lead (CADM)
  • “LabXchange: Reimagining Virtual STEMM Learning with AI-enabled Workflows” by Paul Schwein, Instructional Design Lead (CADM)
  • “Leveraging  Technology and Change Management Strategies to Create Digital Just-in-Time Feedback Portfolios for Student Learning” by Thomas Fleenor, Associate Director, Assessment and Evaluation, Office of Medical Education (HMS)
  • “What If AI Worked Like a Library? Designing AI for Questions, Not Answers” by Ehsan Moghadam, Data Services Librarian for the Sciences (FAS)

Creative Media Content Strategies: Meeting Learners Where They Are 

In an environment saturated with media resulting in a heavy demand on attention we, as educators, need to shift our course content strategies and think more creatively, meeting our learners in ways that feel familiar to where they spend much of their time: within their digital life. Whether listening to podcasts or audiobooks or doomscrolling reel after reel on Instagram or TikTok, our learners have shifted in the ways they consume content, however the general approach to creating content for online courses has not changed much in the past decade. In this interactive breakout session, we will provide the opportunity for attendees to think creatively about their approach to media, inspiring them to look outside the confines of learning design for inspiration. The session will include multiple reflection questions followed by discussion, as well as a workshop portion where attendees will have the opportunity to ideate, plan, and even create a piece of content.

Organizers/Speakers:

  • Michael Oliveri, Senior Media Producer, HGSE Teaching and Learning Lab (HGSE)
  • Sean Snyder, Senior Educational Media Designer, Multimedia Producer, HGSE Teaching and Learning Lab (HGSE)
  • Leah Waldo, Director of Learning Design, Technology, and Media, HGSE Teaching and Learning Lab (HGSE)

Prototyping with Purpose: Designing Teaching and Learning Tools with AI

Could an AI simulation help graduate philosophy students go from understanding of a philosophy to cognitively processing it and making ethical decisions under pressure? Might an interactive design tool support experienced educators throughout the course design process? Could learners rehearse a high-stakes decision by reasoning it out with an AI council of competing stakeholders before they commit? Across every one of these cases, the work starts with key questions: Who is the audience? What learning problem are we actually trying to solve? This session brings together a cross-school group of Harvard learning professionals who have each been building teaching and learning tools with AI and rapid prototyping. Participants will have hands-on interaction with prototypes and engage in an interactive workshop using design thinking to move from a meaningful learning problem to a testable idea, while exploring how AI can or cannot help in the process.

Organizers/Speakers:

  • Christine Hwang, Online Learning Fellow, HGSE-Teaching and Learning Lab (HGSE)
  • Gloria Tam, Instructor, Harvard Extension School (FAS/DCE)
  • Kama Lord, Senior Manager of Academic Technology (HDS)

The Learning Alliance: Teaching as Negotiation

Teaching is a negotiation. We are negotiating for students’ engagement, willingness to take risks, own mistakes, tackle particularly difficult material and be open to feedback. This fast-paced session will examine the three kinds of feedback students need to learn and grow, how to reverse engineer your approach to engage students’ internal voices, and how to facilitate class discussion to meet students’ interests in autonomy, affiliation and appreciation. Attendees will leave with practical tools for increasing classroom transparency and build collaborative learning partnerships.

Organizers/Speakers:

  • Sheila Heen, Thaddeus R. Beal Professor of Practice (HLS)

Afternoon Breakout Sessions 1:15pm - 2:15pm

The afternoon breakouts explore the nuanced, systemic questions of teaching in a rapidly shifting landscape. These concurrent sessions invite you to grapple with the complex philosophies and institutional frameworks that support genuine learning. Join these interactive discussions to explore how to define "AI authenticity" versus automated performance, rethink institutional accreditation beyond mere compliance, model brave leadership through personal narrative, and safeguard open inquiry so students are evaluated purely on the rigor of their argumentation.

Beyond Compliance: Rethinking Accreditation and Educational Effectiveness in an Era of AI

Accreditation is often viewed as a compliance exercise, yet at its best it can serve as a catalyst for institutional reflection, innovation, and improvement. As Harvard begins preparing for its 2027 re-accreditation review, this session will explore a timely question: How should universities evaluate their educational effectiveness in an era of rapid change? Through the lens of accreditation, participants will examine how we define success, gather evidence, and determine whether our courses, programs, departments, and institutions are fulfilling their educational mission. The discussion will explore emerging challenges and opportunities related to artificial intelligence, evolving student expectations, and the increasing availability of data about the student experience. Participants will consider what evidence matters most, what questions institutions should be asking, and how accreditation-inspired assessment efforts can drive meaningful improvements in teaching and learning.

Organizers/Speakers: 

  • Drew Allen, Senior Lecturer, HGSE; Associate Provost for Institutional Research and Analytics (CADM)
  • Ranya Brooks, Director of the Office of Belonging, Community, and Connection (HKS)
  • Becca Miller, Associate Dean for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment (HGSE)
  • Cidhinnia Torres Campos, Director of Accreditation and Quality Improvement (HMS)

Designing Teams for Team Health in Team-based Courses 

This session explores a simple but often overlooked question: If collaboration is central to learning, should teaching students how to collaborate effectively be considered part of the curriculum? Drawing upon experiences from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, presenters will share practical approaches for helping students better understand differences in communication, decision-making, conflict, and collaboration styles. The session will include lessons from Harvard Law School's long-standing use of these concepts in leadership and design-thinking based courses, as well as recent results from Harvard Business School's FIELD Global Capstone program, where a technology-enabled, structured approach to interpersonal competence and team awareness coincided with a reduction in faculty-required team interventions from 45 of 158 teams in 2024 to just one team in 2025. Participants will leave with practical strategies that can be applied across disciplines and class sizes, along with examples of how emerging technologies can help faculty support team development at scale.

Organizers/Speakers: 

  • Rob Toomey, CEO and Co-Founder of Type-Coach
  • Scott Westfahl, Professor of Practice; Director of Executive Education (HLS)
  • Dan Yi, Senior Director, Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs (HLS)

Open Inquiry 

The FAS Classroom Social Compact affirms that faculty have the right to present any views pertinent to the subject they are teaching and, equally, the responsibility to respect students' independence of mind. Other schools are no doubt committed to this pair of aspirations as well. But how do we live up to them both in practice? How do we ensure that syllabi represent the full range of scholarly opinion on a subject, and how do we reassure students that their work will be evaluated on the quality of its argumentation and analysis, not on the specific conclusions it reaches? This panel will present some strategies that have proved to be effective and invite participants to share more.

Organizers/Speakers: 

  • Amanda Claybaugh, Dean of Undergraduate Education, Samuel Zemurray, Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone Radcliffe Professor of English (FAS)
  • Gillian Pierce, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, Academic Programs and Policy (FAS)
  • Jeff Miron, Senior Lecturer on Economics, Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Undergraduate Studies (FAS)
  • Jocelyn Viterna, Professor of Sociology (FAS)
  • Josh Greene, Alfred and Rebecca Lin Professor of Civil Discourse, Professor of Psychology (FAS)
  • Maya Jasanoff, Department Chair of History, Coolidge Professor of History (FAS)
  • Salmaan Keshavjee, Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine Medical Anthropology (HMS)

Training and Mentoring New Teachers to Foster a Teaching Culture

This breakout session will bring together educators from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, the FAS, HMS, and HBS to stimulate reflection and cross-campus dialogue about educational innovations related to teacher training initiatives and other efforts to promote a Harvard teaching culture. This interactive session will begin with a short panel discussion through which faculty panelists will reflect on the ways in which teacher training efforts at different Harvard schools effectively mentor and train the newest members of the instructional community and foster a positive teaching culture at each school. Following the panel, workshop organizers from the Bok Center, HMS, and HBS who facilitate teacher training efforts will lead small group discussions to identify ways in which the shared teacher training efforts generalize across academic fields and to reflect on how teacher training could be implemented within local contexts. We will also discuss challenges on the road to a more robust Harvard-wide teaching culture and how these challenges are being addressed at various Harvard schools. 

Organizers/Speakers: 

  • Annabelle Royer, Assistant Director of Curriculum Innovation (HMS)
  • Karina Lin-Murphy, Associate Director, Course Design and Pedagogical Innovation (HBS-CCTL)
  • Karen Thornber, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor in Literature; Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard College Professor, Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning (FAS)
  • Matthew Sohm, Lecturer on History and Literature (FAS); Assistant Director, Civil Discourse and Classroom Culture (FAS-Bok)
  • Taralyn Tan, Assistant Dean for Educational Innovation and Scholarship; Lecturer on Neurobiology (HMS)
  • Willis Emmons, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration; Director, C. Roland Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning (HBS)