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  • Spring 2024 Harvard i-lab & HILT Faculty Seminar

    Spring 2024 Harvard i-lab & HILT Faculty Seminar: Project-based Learning / Learning-by-doing   The Harvard Innovation Labs (i-Labs) and the Harvard Initiative for Learning & Teaching (HILT) would like to invite all Harvard faculty to a seminar on Wednesday, April 10th from 3-4:30 pm at the i-Labs. Our goal is to convene instructors from across […]

  • 2023 HILT Conference

    The 2023 HILT Conference comes at a pivotal time when artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly discussed and experimented with in higher education. AI holds immense potential to enhance personalized learning experiences, automate administrative tasks, and provide data-driven insights to improve educational outcomes. However, its deployment also raises important questions and challenges. It is crucial to address concerns related to privacy, bias, transparency, disinformation, and the impact on human agency and social dynamics within educational settings. Together, we will explore how AI can be designed, implemented, and governed in a way that prioritizes human relationships and connection in education. By considering the ethical and social implications, as well as the affordances, we aim to shape a future where generative AI tools are used to empower learners, support educators, foster inclusivity, and promote a holistic approach to education.

  • Learning Analytics

    Join the Learning Analytics Affinity Group virtually for an informal sharing and discussion about the intersection of artificial intelligence tools and learning data. Participants will discuss resources, school initiatives, and practices emerging in response to AI use by students and instructors. Come to meet Learning Analytics colleagues and exchange ideas and information. Format will include breakout rooms for smaller discussion groups.

  • Tour of Learning and Making Spaces at the Science and Engineering Complex (SEC)

    The HILT Learning Spaces Affinity Group will host a tour of Learning and Making Spaces at the Science and Engineering Complex (SEC). They'll visit several teaching labs, the REEF Makerspace, and some classrooms. RSVP Required.

  • Missed Connections?: A Study of Academics and Student Employment at Harvard

    In this session, hosted by the Research-Informed Teaching & Learning (RITL) TLC Affinity Group, HGSE Assistant Professor Anthony Abraham Jack will discuss findings from a chapter of his new book project, When Campus Closed: Inside the Upended World of Elite College. He examines how Harvard undergraduates with disparate pre-college experiences differ in their orientations toward seeking employment. In particular, Jack focuses on how these differences affect students' access to “life of the mind” opportunities that involve working with faculty—e.g., as course assistants, research assistants, or employees of teaching and learning centers. These findings have implications for Harvard faculty who serve as gatekeepers to many “life of the mind” positions in universities and for learning-and-teaching professionals who both support faculty members and directly employ students.

  • Tour of Teaching & Learning Spaces at the Harvard Art Museums

    Please join us for an in-person event with the Learning Spaces Affinity Group. The Harvard Art Museums will provide a tour of the facilities at the museum, specifically the spaces that are used for teaching and learning. Some portions of this tour will include spaces with capacity limits, so we will be gathering RSVPs. Please let us know if you plan to attend using the RSVP link.

  • Exploring Teamwork and Collaboration in Learning – A Social Event

    Building off of the HILT conference's theme of teamwork and collaboration, the Learning Design Affinity Group invites you to attend a social event which will feature hands-on examples of both! Together, we will explore how synchronous and asynchronous groupwork can work and how to design one for the classroom. Please join to connect with colleagues from across the university as we engage in various forms of (fun) cooperative activities!

  • 2022 HILT Conference

    The 2022 annual HILT Conference will explore various approaches to collaborative learning and the successes and challenges in facilitating group dynamics. Our plenary session will demonstrate the importance of psychological safety as a foundation for successful teamwork. Breakout sessions will showcase current practices from Harvard faculty across the University on topics related to the effective design and implementation of group projects and collaborative learning. All will highlight students’ first-hand experiences engaging with the learning and teaching environment.

  • Ungrading: Reimagining Traditional Assessments

    This event, jointly hosted by the Research-Informed Teaching & Learning (RITL) and Learning Design HILT Affinity Groups, will summarize the scholarly research informing the “ungrading” movement and explore the implications of ungrading for teaching and learning in higher education. Participants will have the opportunity to collaboratively analyze interdisciplinary case studies of ungrading practices. Additionally, we will share resources and approaches that you can implement in your own professional practice as instructors or education developers.

  • Flexible Classroom Panel

    The HILT Learning Spaces Affinity Group will host a panel discussion around the topic of flat flexible classroom space, via Zoom. We will hear from your colleagues from across Harvard about their experience setting up, supporting, and teaching in classrooms with flexible furniture and a flat design, allowing for varied arrangements and various pedagogies. We will have an honest discussion about the successes, as well as the challenges of this type of learning space. Come with your wonderings and curiosities. There will be time for you to ask questions of our panelists.

  • Learning Analytics at Harvard Business School Online

    A primary goal of HBS Online was to build a platform to bring active, social, and case-based learning experiences to asynchronous online learners. It was also a goal to instrument this platform to facilitate learning analytics and measurement to allow for the study and improvement of the learning experience. Brent Benson will talk about what makes the HBS Online platform and pedagogy different, how metrics and analytics are captured and stored, and give specifics around social engagement and procrastination metrics and how they are being used to improve learning experience and outcomes, especially among under-represented and diverse participant subgroups.

  • Using podcasts to build foundational relationships between students

    Matthew Potts, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and the Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, teaches Introduction to Ministry Studies, a cohort introductory course designed for graduate students who intend to go into the interreligious ministry broadly. His course offers an introduction that spans a variety of religions and simultaneously cultivates a sense of community amongst students. While the course was traditionally conducted in a lecture format with some section discussions, Potts had to rethink the course’s structure completely when it shifted online amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. “I wanted to get people off screen,” he explains. Rather than sitting through a live lecture, students listened to podcasts of Potts and the teaching team conversing about the readings prior to each class. To ensure students would also engage with him directly, Potts also organized Oxford-style tutorials, with students meeting in groups of two or three and with a different member of the teaching team to discuss the course material. Students would write a one-page memo reflecting on the readings and present it to get the conversation going. “I wanted a place for students to come and continue the conversation and feel invested in what they had read or what they had listened to, but not in any burdensome way.”

  • Shifting STEM culture

    Robin Gottlieb, Professor of the Practice of Teaching Mathematics, aims to make mathematics accessible and exciting to all students in each of her courses. “When students come to Harvard, they have very different but set ideas of what happens in the classroom,” Gottlieb explains. “In many high school math classrooms, the dominant cultural norm is an ‘I do, you do, we do’ model. The teacher is expected to tell you what to do. One of my main objectives is to shift the culture of the classroom so that students become mathematical thinkers.” Gottlieb works alongside colleagues on the preceptor team to construct classrooms in which students actively participate in the development of ideas. Inspired by colleagues’ such as Eric Mazur’s active learning and John Asher Johnson’s Tao of TALC, Gottlieb has students spend more time working on problems together in groups at the blackboard, reflect actively on questions and lessons from daily problem sets, and co-build community norms around supportive teamwork. Through group work, Gottlieb has developed mathematics classrooms that are more welcoming, active, and empowering places of learning.

  • Piloting an experimental and experiential course

    Senior Lecturers Archie Jones, Henry McGee, and Jeffrey Bussgang teamed up to design a new Harvard Business School (HBS) course, Scaling Minority Businesses, in which students learn about the unique challenges of Black-owned businesses. Students are grouped into teams and paired with one of ten Black entrepreneurs in the Boston area, support their business’s strategic initiatives, and assist in their continued growth. The instructors designed the class around three modules: (1) systemic racism’s impact on wealth creation more broadly, which established for students, as Professor Jones put it, “where we are and how we got there;” (2) access to capital, including what organizations can do and how the market needs to engage differently with Black-owned businesses; and (3) access to customers, for instance supplier diversity programs and how to get the first big contract. Given the lack of traditional cases about minority businesses and their challenges, the instructors designed “live cases,” with the Black business leaders visiting the class and students working with them in real-time. The professors invited a range of class speakers, including experts from the Brookings Institution and Initiative for a Competitive Inner City.

  • Empowering students to make key decisions

    Dr. Phuong Pham, Assistant Professor and Director of Humanitarian Studies, teaches the required course for HSPH Humanitarian Studies Concentrators, Field Methods in Humanitarian Crises, and oversees a set of ongoing online modules titled, “Build a Better Response.” Dr. Pham stresses the need to ground studies within reality through experiential learning. She and others have created a library of case studies for students to practice analyzing complex scenarios. In addition, they collaborate with an expansive network of people each year to pull off a remarkable feat: a weekend-long humanitarian response simulation at Harold Parker State Forest where the students navigate an assigned role within a real-life humanitarian crisis simulation. “We try to provide students the opportunity to engage with a scripted real-life scenario. It gives them a tangible way to interact with simulated situations other than reading a text and listening to secondhand stories.”

  • The Spark of Learning – Energizing and Motivating Students in Uncertain Times

    Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh will bring to bear empirical evidence from the study of education, psychology, and neuroscience to argue that if you want to capture students’ attention, enhance their motivation, harness their working memory, bolster their long-term retention, and encourage habits related to good mental health, you should consider the emotional impact of your teaching style and course design. In this 75-minute session, participants will be invited to engage with practical examples of activities and assignments that are rooted in this research and to think about implications of these research-based insights for their own practice.

  • Learner-centered Pedagogy for Skill-building

    Christina Warinner, Associate Professor of Anthropology, empowers students to explore real-world, thorny topics in science that also have widespread social implications through course work and guest speakers. She brings her own experience as an interdisciplinary researcher to the classroom and directly supports students as they delve into more complex material and learn how to navigate the hidden curriculum (norms of the discipline). Her students practice grappling with interdisciplinary dilemmas in realistic ways. “I want each assignment a student does to be both knowledge-building and skill-building,” she explains. Her courses attract students from both the humanities and sciences, creating a more intellectually diverse learning environment.

  • “Ethical Reasoning for Computer Scientists” with Jeff Behrends, James Mickens, and Trystan Goetze

    In a follow-on to HILT's 2021 Conference, we will learn how Embedded EthiCS meets the challenge of making ethical reasoning integral to computer science education. We'll explore how embedding philosophers directly into computer science courses helps students learn how to think through the ethical and social implications of their work. And we'll take a deeper dive into the nuts and bolts of the collaborative Teaching Lab.

  • State of Learning Design: An Informal Event to Talk About Where Our Work Is Right Now

    We have experienced so many changes to our work that now that we transition into another academic year, we thought it would be a good time to check in on our community to hear how you are doing, what you are experiencing in your virtual or in-person work and what challenges you anticipate having as well as what lessons you have learned. We want to come together to learn that we are not alone in all these challenges and wins together.

  • Interdisciplinary learning through accessible, intentional technology

    Hong Qu, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, taught Data Visualization virtually last spring to over 70 students from different Harvard Schools, levels of experience, and corners of the world. To foster a close-knit community among students from diverse backgrounds, Qu intentionally curated a set of online tools and learning exercises to generate an “ambient telepresence.” For instance, he assigned group data visualization projects to promote peer learning and used VoiceThread for assigned peer critiques. During synchronous class time, students were invited to sketch with Qu using Jamboard on the shared screen—a novel form of participation to draw out the inner artist/designer in every student. “I wanted to give them a sense that we’re spending time with each other in this very challenging period to learn as a community, to work together on group projects, and to achieve organic connections and authentic relationships between all our unique places during this pandemic.”
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