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.

• Treating merging forms of evidence around us as a collective ensemble

  As an historian of religions, Davíd Carrasco, Neil L. Rudenstine Professor for the Study of Latin America, conducts his courses through an ensemble approach, which enables students to learn about complex evidence from a variety of approaches, sources and mediums. This approach contains four parts: (1) an interdisciplinary intellectual method, (2) incorporating a variety of sources, including artifacts, texts, films, and museum exhibitions; (3) expanding disciplinary perspectives through team teaching and visiting speakers; and (4) organizing diverse student experiences and inviting a range of responses. One example of the ensemble in action is Carrasco’s annual collaboration with the Peabody Museum on their Día de los Muertos exhibition as part of his Gen Ed course, Montezuma’s Mexico: Then and Now (co-taught with William L. Fash) in which students visit and add their own interpretations and art works to the ofrendas.

• Next Gen Success = Harvard Success: Inclusive Practices for Supporting First-Gen, Lower-Income Students In and Beyond the Classroom

  Join members of the Harvard Next Gen Initiative to learn more about their Harvard Culture Lab Innovation Fund pilot program that consolidates, aligns, and enhances Harvard’s institutional supports for Next Gen student populations (predominantly first-gen, low-income students) in and beyond the classroom. This session presents an overview of the Next Gen student population, pedagogical tools that promote Next Gen Student Success, and how each one of us plays a role in strengthening Harvard’s commitment to inclusive excellence.

• Engaging with course material and serving communities at the same time

  Linda Bilmes, Daniel Patrick Moynihan Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, created the Harvard Kennedy School’s first-ever field lab, which combines in-class learning with real-world project work in local and state governments. Since its inception in 2005, the course has involved hundreds of students from across Harvard graduate schools. It is an advanced course focused on public finance, operations and budgeting. Each year, Bilmes and her teaching team receive dozens of applications from mayors and city managers. She and her team select a small number of intellectually challenging projects with buy-in at the highest level. The selected partners describe their projects to students at the start of the term; projects range from addressing homelessness to municipal debt. Then students go on site visits to “get a sense of the crunchiness” of each task and to rank clients by interest before they are sorted into collaborative teams. At the end of the semester, students present recommendations to clients.

• How Good Accessibility Practices Enhance Online Teaching

  When it comes to accessibility, it’s much better to be proactive than reactive—especially when designing major components of your courses. Furthermore, designing accessible courses helps provide equitable educational opportunities and added benefits for all learners. Join us to learn more from our panel of accessibility experts from across the University about the ways in which accessibility practices enhance classroom teaching and learning.

• Reconfiguring classroom mechanics to break down hegemony & build up student learning

  John Asher Johnson, Professor of Astronomy, aims to cut through dominant constructs of what teaching looks like and to disrupt hegemonies in his classes through collective norms setting and conveying to students that they are “intellectual peers with the professor.” He structures his courses around the Tao of TALC method in which students work on assignments in collaborative groups while the instructor and TFs use the Socratic method to stimulate collective problem-solving.

• Using asynchronous learning to improve students’ learning experiences

  Elisa New, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature, has ample experience blending asynchronous and synchronous learning to teach students at Harvard and beyond. Asynchronous learning happens independently from in-person class time and can take many forms. In her courses, New has incorporated on-location “field-trips,” discussions with relevant authors, and even recordings of former student discussions, which has helped current students “up their game.” “People really love those. They like to see how a good discussion works.”

• Grappling with a global pandemic in class, as a class

  Jonathan Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law, adapted his digital governance course to incorporate what everyone was really focused on in mid-spring of 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of “compartmentalizing” between class and crisis, he reworked the syllabus to respond to students’ needs and evolving experiences. Zittrain replaced the final exam with collaborative reports in which students examined aspects of the pandemic through the lens of digital governance dilemmas. “The idea was to offer students an opportunity to apply what they learned in the course to problems that were on everybody’s mind.”

• Policy and practice: Learning data in learning design

  Topic: Policy and practice: Learning data in learning design. Speakers: Evan Sanders, Associate Director of Curriculum Services (HMS); Cynthia Deng, candidate for Master in Architecture and Master of Urban Planning, 2021 (GSD); Milos Mladenovic, candidate for Master in Architecture, 2020 (GSD); Tara Abbatello, Teaching and Learning Specialist, Christensen Center for Teaching and Learning (HBS); and Carol Kentner, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Gutman Library (HGSE)

• Microsoft Teams for Collaborative Case Writing

  Microsoft Teams for Collaborative Case Writing, A Case Studies Affinity Group Event

• 2020 HILT Conference

  The ninth annual HILT Conference will bring together a diverse, engaged, and engaging set of speakers and panelists to share their successes and challenges in building equitable learning opportunities, facilitating charged or difficult class discussions, and supporting students as they navigate rapidly shifting circumstances.