Into Practice, a biweekly communication distributed from the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning to active instructors during the academic year was inspired by a successful 2012 HILT grant project. The e-letter highlights the pedagogical practices of individual faculty members from across Schools and delivers timely, evidence-based teaching advice, contributing to and strengthening a University-wide community of practice around teaching.
Below is a catalog of all the Into Practice issues sorted by the publication date. To subscribe to Into Practice, please sign-up via our Mailing List page.
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Bringing the best parts of a seminar into larger courses
When enrollment for seminar After Luther: Faith, Will, Law, and the Question of Goodness doubled last year, Michelle Sanchez, Assistant Professor of Theology, was concerned that the depth and quality of the connections—with and among students and the texts they read together—would diminish. In response, she modified some logistical elements including assigning different pairs of students to circulate brief response papers before class and then lead discussion each week. -
Interactive lecturing: High-leverage teaching practices to energize students
Paola Arlotta, Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, creates an environment of active inquiry, experimentation, and brainstorming by employing interactive lecturing in her course, Got (New) Brain? The Evolution of Brain Regeneration. -
Hearing their own voice: Consistent student participation while discussing polarizing topics
Elizabeth Papp Kamali, Assistant Professor of Law, wants to ensure that students contribute consistently throughout the semester: "A student can get into a rut if they don't participate in those first few classes, and it can be very difficult to break that cycle." -
The merits of an equal basis of ignorance
Giovanni Parmigiani, Professor of Biostatistics, selects new scientific articles as well as opinion pieces for freshman seminar course FRSEMR 22H – My Genes and Cancer to discuss in-the-moment scientific discoveries in genetics research, and encourages students to also recommend topics of interest. -
Cultivating the skill and the orientation to listen
Joshua Margolis, James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business Administration, demands of himself intensive listening while teaching, and asks the same from students: “When I listen really carefully it allows me to push students hard and help them see what they have within themselves.” -
Engaging students in a course postmortem dialogue
Alfred Guzzetti, Osgood Hooker Professor of Visual Arts, dedicates the final session of VES 52R: Introduction to Non-Fiction Videomaking—where students spend the term creating one nonfiction film on a subject of their choosing—to a class-wide postmortem discussion about all course elements. -
Difficult topics: Seeking and considering alternative viewpoints in the classroom
Meira Levinson, Professor of Education, develops case studies about difficult questions in educational ethics—for example, grade inflation, charter schools, and policies that disproportionately impact low-income students of color—for A203 Educational Justice students to debate and discuss the ethical dimensions of educational practice and policy. -
Problems and puzzles: Boosting engagement with interactivity
Joshua Greene, Professor of Psychology, designs course sessions for maximum engagement by creating interactive opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to grapple with problems and challenge one another. -
Online engagement: Designing a learner-centered HarvardX course
Diane Moore, Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies and Education, collaborated with HDS and FAS colleagues to produce a six-module, online course offering through HarvardX called World Religions Through Their Scriptures. -
From the source: Guest speakers in the classroom
David Garvin, C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration,utilizes guest speakers in General Management: Processes and Action in order to promote deeper understanding of managerial and organizational realities. -
Learning through literature: “Closer to life as it is really lived”
Sandra Sucher, MBA Class of 1966 Professor of Management Practice, teaches “The Moral Leader” at Harvard Business School with a literature-based approach. -
Feedback vs. evaluation: Getting past the reluctance to deliver negative feedback
When Dr. Keith Baker, Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Anesthesia Residency Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, gives medical residents feedback, he emphasizes a “learning orientation” (where the goal is mastery), rather than a “performance orientation” (where the goal is validation of abilities). -
Learning from learning management systems: New ways to engage students through Canvas
Arthur Applbaum, Adams Professor of Democratic Values, Quinton Mayne, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, and Christopher Robichaud, Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy piloted the new University-wide learning management system, Canvas, in their spring 2015 courses at the Harvard Kennedy School. -
Elevating class conversation: Taking a case-based approach
Nancy Kane, Professor of Management and Associate Dean of Case-based Teaching and Learning at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, trains instructors on using the teaching case to lead effective course discussions. -
Devices in the classroom? Things to consider
Alison Simmons, Samuel H. Wolcott Professor of Philosophy, made a decision in 2012 to include a policy in all her syllabi stating that electronic devices be put away during class time. -
Teachly: A research project
Teachly was developed at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) to help faculty members teach more inclusively and effectively. The tool enables faculty to get to know their students and interact with them in a meaningful way through the robust data infrastructure. -
Transforming team-learning teaching cases for online platforms: scaling up an e-learning module development project to expand reach across Harvard and to public health professionals in field settings
Awardees will extend the transformation of traditional to online cases across Harvard by developing a new e-module for delivering teaching cases on-line to public health professionals in field settings, and convening a cross-Harvard workshop to share best practices. -
Team-based learning in the humanities
Awardee will redesign a course with team-based learning (TBL) principles and assess the benefits and challenges of the approach. -
Understanding the impact of using mechanistic concept mapping as a collaborative learning tool
Awardee conducted a mixed-methods study in HMS course Homeostasis I. -
Transforming team-learning teaching cases in public health for online platforms: an e-learning module development project
Awardees transformed STRIPED teaching cases for online delivery, consistent with digital learning research and toward expanded outreach to working professionals.