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.

• Pushing students to confront limits by transforming the abstract to physical form

  In her Transformations course, Assistant Professor of Architecture Megan Panzano uses architectural design methods and concepts, and a workshop approach for giving feedback, to engage undergraduates from a wide range of concentrations. When students translate abstract ideas into physical form through a variety of materials and fabrication techniques (see photos below), they confront limits, question assumptions, and expand their problem-solving capacity.

• Balance of agency and flexibility helps students develop their own artistic process

  Nora Schultz, Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, encourages experimentation and a diversity of readings for her courses Shape Shifting Your Reality and Object Matter of Jelly Fish: Sculpture Course.

• Mastering course content through creative assignments

  Elena Kramer, Bussey Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Noel Michele Holbrook, Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry, co-teach General Education course OEB 52: Biology of Plants through lectures, labs, field trips, and weekly quizzes that students use to combine concepts into a creative project at the end of the semester.

• Creative projects: Interpreting history through various media

  Vincent Brown, Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies, trains students to interpret history through various media including graphics, data visualizations, videos, and art installations.

• A ‘tangible dimension:’ Learning by making, listening, and tasting

  Gojko Barjamovic, Lecturer on Assyriology, increases student learning in ANE 103 Ancient Lives by designing activities to engage students’ full range of senses.

• Whiteness: An Ethnographic Question

  Awardee will use an ethnographic lens to spark an interdisciplinary and intergenerational conversation on the role of whiteness in research, pedagogy, and institutional life.

• Development of Student-run Podcasts as an Innovative Learning and Communication Tool

  Awardees will develop training workshops to teach students to communicate technical knowledge to broader audiences through podcasting.

• “Making space” for interdisciplinary critical thinking

  Awardees will offer a series of interdisciplinary workshops that develop critical thinking through making.

• Project Nights and open-ended design research

  Awardees will measure the effects of open-ended extracurricular projects on student learning.

• Expanding existing innovative program for assessing student learning in hands-on innovation courses

  Expanding existing innovative program for assessing student learning in hands-on innovation courses. Awardee plans to advance methods for better assessing how teams interact and ideas develop during experiential learning in multi-disciplinary engineering classes focused on design and innovation.

• Sound studies

  Awardee plans to create a computer lab for sound analysis that could support a number of existing courses across several departments.

• HGSE Teaching and Learning Lab

  Support for instructional design and development through consultations, grants, programs, projects and tools.

• Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH)

  "TECH's mission is to advance the understanding and practice of innovation and entrepreneurship through experiential education: by initiating, advancing and informing student projects. TECH helps faculty create and deliver innovation and entrepreneurship project courses, provides students with project support and sponsors and advises student groups working to build the Harvard innovation community. TECH, part of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (HSEAS), creates an innovation community for both undergraduate and graduate students across the university."

• SEAS “Active Learning Lab”

  The SEAS academic plan emphasizes the need for hands-on engineering experiences and student design projects. The Active Learning Laboratories are expected to take the lead and excel in supporting these student experiences.

• SEAS Learning Incubator

  The Learning Incubator (LInc) seeks to advance learning at SEAS and elevate SEAS as a worldwide leader in innovation in learning and teaching by: Providing a team-based infrastructure for faculty to incubate, develop and adapt novel ideas and approaches to teaching, developing a culture of scholarship of teaching and learning (including research on learning and assessment) within SEAS and FAS, and providing opportunities for faculty to learn new approaches to teaching aligned with research on how students learn

• Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

  By supporting experimentation, innovation, and evidence-based practices, the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning seeks to create transformational learning experiences for faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

• Harvard Art Museums

  "The Harvard Art Museums—the Fogg Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum—advance knowledge about and appreciation of art and art museums. The museums are committed to preserving, documenting, presenting, interpreting, and strengthening the collections and resources in their care. The Harvard Art Museums bring to light the intrinsic power of art and promote critical looking and thinking for students, faculty, and the public. Through research, teaching, professional training, and public education, the museums encourage close study of original works of art, enhance access to the collections, support the production of original scholarship, and foster university-wide collaboration across disciplines."