Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT)
Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning
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  • 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 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.

  • 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.

  • Capturing conversation to build ideas collectively

    Ryan Buell, Finnegan Family Associate Professor of Business Administration, leveraged Scribble for his remote course to help students engage with case discussion longitudinally and collectively. The virtual board platform allowed students to engage online in lieu of an in-person experience in which the blackboard operates as a coordinating element for case discussion. “It helps students put the pieces together, allowing them to track any idea shared by the faculty and shared by the students.”

  • Mutually beneficial partnerships

    Robert S. Huckman, Albert J. Weatherhead III Professor of Business Administration and Ariel Dora Stern, Poronui Associate Professor of Business Administration pair student groups with local hospitals to address challenges related to access, adoption of new delivery methods, and the quality of care in their elective course, Transforming Healthcare Delivery. This applied work is rooted in a series of cases that have been written by Harvard Business School (HBS) faculty and articles that cover broader ideas from the literature and previous research.

  • Teacher Employment Fund: Curriculum Refinement

    Teacher Employment Fund: Curriculum Refinement Awardees:Peggy Walenda Mativo (HBS) and Rachel Luo (MIT-Architecture) Summary coming soon. 

  • GenUnity

    GenUnity is a civic leadership experience that empowers individuals to affect real, systemic change in their community.

  • First GrAID

    First GrAID is a digital platform where children can learn about health and safety in a gamified manner that is both fun for them and convenient for their parents.

  • ELEVATE

    ELEVATE seeks to create an online learning platform that leverages adaptive teaching to scale effective, personalized professional development in large, urban districts.

  • My Dental Key

    Dental Key is an online learning tool for clinical dental education.

  • Catalyst

    Catalyst is an online educational platform focusing on English for the K-6 segment in Indonesia.

  • ADITUM

    ADITUM is a medical e-learning platform

  • Pillow Fort

    We are developing personalized books that solve problems for parents looking to create teachable moments on difficult topics and improve vocabulary retention, and solve problems for gift givers who want a gift that they know the kid they are buying for will love.

  • OCULIS

    Oculis is a platform to address the lack of financial literacy in the classroom.

  • ACE: Accelerating Civic Engagement

    ACE seeks to reignite civic engagement nationally by empowering individuals to learn about, participate in, and lead their local communities.

  • Utopia

    The vision of Utopia is to provide the high-quality curated content for early childhood development.

  • Bonsai

     Bonsai is a personalized and adaptive solution that develops SEL skills in middle school students by encouraging them to engage in microlearning activities.

  • LovelyBooks

    Awardees plan to bring technology and research (e.g. customization of morals by parents, illustrating children directly into books to increase engagement etc) to improve the learning outcomes generated by children's picture books.

  • C2B: Classroom to Boardroom

    C2B seeks to provide an immersive training program designed in close collaboration with rapidly growing industries (i.e. tech-focused companies). Awardees want to help organizations recruit and retain talents that will help increase productivity and achieve higher rate of sustainable growth.

  • MythOS

    MythOS is addressing the growing gap in social and emotional skills among adolescents who are not being served by traditional social activities (sports, theater, etc.) but are instead consumed by digital entertainment. MythOS is using games that resonate with digitally-focused adolescents to drive home social and emotional skills.
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