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.

• The importance of incorporating mentorship into your teaching practice

  Dr. Anita Vanka, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Associate Advisor & Director of Hinton Society at Harvard Medical School, co-directs Practice of Medicine with Dr. Katherine Johnston, Assistant Professor of Medicine. The eleven-month course involves several hundred faculty members at different teaching hospitals and is designed to teach first-year medical and dental students how to effectively interview and communicate with patients, perform a thorough physical exam, reason through diagnostic possibilities, and translate findings effectively in both oral and written form. Given the size and breadth of the course, Drs. Vanka and Johnston developed a mentoring system which allows for each student to meet with an assigned faculty advisor at their hospital site several times a year. These meetings encourage faculty to develop personal relationships with the students, oversee their clinical progress, provide feedback, and guide students into setting goals for their learning and progress.

• 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.

• 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.

• Understanding pathophysiology with real-life vignettes

  Barbara Cockrill, Harold Amos Academy Associate Professor of Medicine, uses case-based collaborative learning (CBCL) in her Homeostasis I course to help medical students explore real-life clinical scenarios they may face as practitioners. Case discussions start in cohorts of four students, formed at the beginning of the course, and focus on a series of questions. Discussion continues with the full class of 40 students, facilitated by Cockrill and other medical school faculty.

• ProjectBeta.id

  ProjectBeta is a platform that aims to improve mental health literacy among parents in Indonesia by providing mental health curriculum made by experts in the form of articles and practical videos to help recognize, manage, and prevent mental illness in children; it is also giving instant access to the clinician.

• ADITUM

  ADITUM is a medical e-learning platform

• Building Teaching Professional Development for Harvard Graduate Students involved in STEMM Educational Outreach

  Awardees will create and curate professional development resources for evidence-based inclusive teaching that is specifically tailored to Harvard graduate students involved in STEMM outreach programs.

• University-Wide Human Rights Curriculum

  We seek to bring together the brilliant minds of the different Harvard Schools to create a space for knowledge sharing and discussion regarding human rights issues around the world.

• Helping students see themselves as scientists

  When Dr. Kevin Eggan, Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, did research as an undergraduate, it “transformed for me what science was and what it could be.” His Precision Genetics and Gene Therapy year-long course offers sophomores a similar opportunity. In the fall, students are introduced to a “jamboree of recent medical discoveries in Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).” Working in small groups, they explore and then choose a gene to focus on. In the spring, they continue in small groups to experiment on mice, learn tools for analyzing the data they generate, and present to their peers, instructors, and external experts along the way.

• Knot.

  Case logging, which is required for all procedures, is completely manual and consequently time-consuming, inaccurate, and costly. Knot automates this process and enhances the case log to contain all of the knowledge gained from a procedure, and give residents back their time so that they may instead learn, study, perform research or learn surgeries to better serve their patients.