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.

• Learning from and giving back to the community through the classroom

  Deborah Jewell-Sherman, Gregory R. Anrig Professor of Practice in Educational Leadership, helps students develop leadership skills and a deeper understanding of the work involved in being a systems-level leader. In her two-term course, The Workplace Lab for System-Level Leaders (WPL), students actively collaborate with school districts across the nation, including the local Cambridge, Lincoln and Boston public schools. Jewell-Sherman intentionally scaffolds the course from personal introspection to undertaking significant problems of practice for sitting superintendents and CEO’s of educational entities. Before students are assigned to teams that maximize diversity in leadership and communication styles, they deeply reflect to identify their core values. “In terms of practice,” she notes, “it’s important to know who you are and for what you stand.” Groups collaborate on simulations and analyze case studies based on real-world problems while leveraging recent research. Later, students work directly with community partners and present recommendations in a “New Haven” run before hosting an on-campus final “Broadway” run to a full audience. In January, Jewell-Sherman typically takes students on a four-day trip to a school district or educational entity in another state to collaborate on new projects.

• Science Bytes

  Science Bytes Awardees: Ragini Lall (HGSE) and Aditi Kumar (MIT-Engineering) Summary: coming soon.

• Open Minds

  Our solution is to create open education resources (OER) so that all teachers have access to free, K-12 TEKs-aligned curricula designed through research-based culturally, community responsive and anti-bias frameworks.

• Innovate for Africa

  Innovate for Africa (IFA) is a nonprofit organization that provides graduating STEAM students in Nigeria 1-month training on entrepreneurial and labour-demanded skills as well as support throughout a subsequent 11-month placement at an innovation driven start-up.

• InCompass.ed

  InCompass.ed offers transformational leadership programs for young people to develop authentic purpose.

• Zhorai: A Conversational Agent and Curriculum for Teaching Machine Learning

  Our project aims to explore the potential of conversational agents as a tool for learning and engagement in K-12 AI education and programming.

• The Infinity Project

  The Infinity Project Awardees: Natasha Japanwala (HGSE), Abdullah Ali Khan (HGSE), Zeerak Ahmed (External), and Natasha Sakraney (External) Summary: coming soon.

• The Lab

  The Lab seeks to develop a six-week summer program that is designed to create access and address the significant challenges which exacerbate the education achievement and opportunity gaps between high income and low-income students.

• StoryPlay

  StoryPlay is a fun storytelling game that promotes children’s oral development, creativity and imagination and makes oral development skills practice accessible to students both in formal pre-primary education and in informal settings.

• Sikaun Learning Center (SLC)

  SLC is a community-based learning center in Nepal that provides opportunities to engage in learning outside of school by providing learning resources and project-based learning experiences.