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.

• Enhancing learning through an alternative (and immersive) classroom

  Nicole Mills, Senior Preceptor in Romance Languages and Literatures, helps students grasp the French language and experience the culture through “alternative classroom contexts.” Specifically, students participate in virtual reality (VR) experiences alongside the curriculum. During the first week of the semester, students immerse themselves in the daily lives of four different Parisians from the same quarter through a series of 360 VR videos that were self-recorded by the Parisians themselves. They then partner to challenge stereotypes of Parisian culture and compare observations and findings. For remote learning, Mills added both amateur and professional VR films showcasing Parisian life with accompanying tasks. These VR experiences are mediated by one-on-one 30-minute discussions with Parisians designed to both develop interactional competence and encourage the discovery of cultural phenomena. VR can transport students to culturally immersive experiences that are otherwise impossible given COVID-19 travel restrictions.

• Bridging practice and theory in the professional classroom

  Dr. Richard Schwartzstein, Ellen and Melvin Gordon Professor of Medicine and Medical Education, is revolutionizing textbook-dependent classrooms by incorporating real-life applications. In this case, first-year Harvard Medical School students apply their reading through case simulations. A robot functions as the patient, and a small group of students take on various roles to work together and treat the patient. Students are supported by a facilitator, who offers guiding questions but no direct answers, as well as the rest of the class, who serve as consultants or in other supporting roles in the case, like the patient’s family. “Instead of a paper case, now it feels much more real. And suddenly, they’re immersed in taking care of a patient,” Dr. Schwartzstein reflects. After a simulation ends, the whole class debriefs the case, including what students struggled with and how they felt during the exercise.

• Simulations & Games Affinity Group: Educational Games Gallery Walk

  Wednesday, May 31, 2017: 12:00pm to 2:00pm at Cabot Science Library. HILT Simulations & Games Affinity Group invites you to join them for an afternoon of learning, fun, and exploration. Featuring hands-on board games, role plays, video games, and virtual reality -- this event will showcase a variety of educational games being used in learning experiences across Harvard.

• Making multiple perspectives and complexities visible

  Benjamin Sommers, Professor of Health Policy and Economics, finishes his Healthcare Safety Net and Vulnerable Populations course with a debate: students are randomly assigned to roles—as senators, witnesses, or experts—and probe aspects of healthcare policy, simulating deliberations that take place on the Senate floor. Somewhat similar to real hearings, each witness makes an opening statement and then takes questions from acting Senators.

• Designing Your Course

  Course design resources from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, including 1) Backward Design, 2) Functions of the Syllabus, 3) Formative ("low-stakes") vs. Summative ("high-stakes") Assessments, 4) Assignment Modalities, 5) Framing and Sequencing Assignments, and 6) Grading and Responding to Student Work.

• 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.

• Virtual reality narratives in foreign language pedagogy

  Awardees will engage foreign language students in cultural and linguistic immersion through virtual reality (VR) film narratives.

• New methods for hands-on teaching in the history of technology

  Awardee developed experiential learning opportunities for students in history of technology courses, including in-class demonstration and simulation.

• New gateway to STEM

  Awardees will install an interactive, touch-screen kiosk running interactive WorldWide Telescope Tours in the Science Center and analyze usage.

• Improving learning experiences by building cooperative environments in classrooms

  Awardees will use classroom simulations to study helpful behavioral economic interventions toward increased learning and cooperation in classrooms.

• Integrating consequential simulations in coursework

  Innovative Teaching using a Trading Simulation

• Learning and teaching negotiation and conflict resolution skills to enhance patient safety in the OR

  Awardees plan to enable learners to apply principles of negotiation and conflict resolution in the high-stakes operating room environment, with the ultimate goal of improving medical teamwork and patient safety.

• Development of a multimedia textbook

  Awardees plan to develop a digital textbook for an existing course.

• Hands-on virtual dissection for dynamic anatomy instruction and evaluation

  Awardees plan to use Kinect technology for “hands on” virtual dissection.

• Program on Negotiation

  "The Program on Negotiation (PON) is a university consortium dedicated to developing the theory and practice of negotiation and dispute resolution. As a community of scholars and practitioners, PON serves a unique role in the world negotiation community. Founded in 1983 as a special research project at Harvard Law School, PON includes faculty, students, and staff from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University. At PON, we are committed to developing the theory and practice of negotiation, to nurturing the next generation of negotiation teachers and scholars, and to helping students become more effective negotiators. We accomplish this through research, seminars, courses, conferences, publications and special events."

• HKS Strengthening Learning and Teaching Excellence

  Provides confidential consultation services to individual HKS faculty and to HKS faculty groups for professional development purposes. Provides case and curriculum development/materials for public service professional education.

• 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

• Office of Digital Teaching and Learning

  Supports pedagogical and technical aspects of course design, development and implementation, for instructors in Extension and Summer School.

• 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.

• 2014 HILT Conference

  HILT Conference 2014: Engagement and Distance The HILT Annual Conference was held on Tuesday, September 16, 2014 in Wasserstein Hall. Thank you to those of you who joined us, both on campus and remotely! Theme and motivating questions The conference is designed around a motivating question, one that builds on the thematic questions from the two previous […]