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2019 HILT Conference
HILT’s eighth annual conference held on September 27, 2019, in Wasserstein Hall, explored various approaches to peer learning at Harvard and beyond: in the classroom (residential and online) and outside the classroom. -
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. -
Engaging real-world stakeholders to provide feedback to students
Jal David Mehta, Associate Professor of Education, directs students to use design thinking and interact with real-world stakeholders when making proposals to improve educational systems in his course Deeper Learning for All: Designing a 21st-Century School System. At the end of the semester, students present final projects to panels of educational experts ranging from superintendents to K-12 teachers to Harvard Graduate School of Education faculty. -
Structuring intellectual collaboration and play
Emily Dolan, Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities, co-teaches the graduate seminar Instruments and Instrumentalities with Professor and James McGill Chair in Culture and Technology Jonathan Sterne of McGill University in which students from both Harvard and McGill (representing a range of disciplines) engage with one another via audio and video conferencing, trips to each campus, online documents, and other tools. -
Using a student cohort to test and innovate new training materials
Tyler Giannini and Susan Farbstein, Clinical Professors of Law, pull back the curtain on pedagogy for students in the seminar Advanced Skills Training in Strategic Human Rights Advocacy by making them part of a learning community and giving them ownership over the learning process. For example, each year students work to improve simulations in which they originally were participants, in an earlier prerequisite seminar attached to the International Human Rights Clinic. -
Enhancing student learning through field experience
Gonzalo Giribet, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, takes students in his course Biology and Evolution of Invertebrate Animals (co-taught this semester with Professor Cassandra Extavour) to Panama to do fieldwork during spring break to help them see how invertebrate animals “are assembled in nature,” and how “organisms are integrated into systems.” Students incur no costs for the trip thanks to funding from the Museum of Comparative Zoology. -
Education Innovation Showcase
The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) held its inaugural Education Innovation Showcase on Thursday, April 11 at the Harvard Innovation Labs. More than 100 people gathered to hear learn about 30 projects designed to enhance teaching and learning, sponsored by HILT. Read a synopsis of the event featured in The Harvard Gazette! -
Applying human-centered design processes to build successful teams
Bethanne Altringer, Senior Preceptor in Innovation and Design and Director of the Desirability Lab, uses personalized approaches to students’ learning in courses like The Innovator's Practice: Finding, Building and Leading Good Ideas with Others and Design Survivor: Experiential Lessons in Designing for Desirability, focusing on individual-level growth that leads to team effectiveness by grading both process and product. -
Conveying large amounts of material efficiently and clarifying complex ideas
Tyler VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology, uses lectures to integrate and illuminate core concepts, bringing new insights to students and sometimes for his own scholarship in the process. His courses—on religion and public health, on applied statistics, and on research design—often cross disciplinary boundaries and involve unexpected combinations of ideas. -
Enriching learning through student-led provocation
Though Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Lecturer on History and Literature, Public Policy, and Education, plays an integral role in class discussions for his course Stories of Slavery and Freedom, students are responsible for leading the majority of classes through an exercise McCarthy refers to as “provocation.” “The provokers do not come in and give a summary of what we’ve read or a mini-lecture about the top-line themes that might emerge from the assigned readings. I really want them to find some way to literally provoke us into conversation, get the juices flowing, and try to get all the students to think about something urgently at the outset of class.” -
Data Science and Applied Statistics Education Workshop
Friday, January 25th | 10:00am—3:00pm in CGIS Belfer Case Study Room. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Data Science Initiative, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity, this event will focus on data science and applied statistics and bring together a select set of faculty, student teaching fellows, and staff to: Illuminate how these domains are taught and learned in various ways across Harvard; Demonstrate tools recently developed to support that pedagogical work; Share results of cross-University curriculum mapping efforts in these domains; Meet colleagues from other departments and schools who are teaching similar content -
Pushing students to confront limits by transforming the abstract to physical form
In her Transformations course, Assistant Professor of Architecture Megan Panzano uses architectural design methods and concepts, and a workshop approach for giving feedback, to engage undergraduates from a wide range of concentrations. When students translate abstract ideas into physical form through a variety of materials and fabrication techniques (see photos below), they confront limits, question assumptions, and expand their problem-solving capacity. -
YourCampus
The main purpose of YourCampus is to provide an educational networking platform for prospective applicants to connect with current students from their top choice universities. -
2018 HILT Conference
The 2018 HILT Conference was held on Friday, September 21 in Wasserstein Hall. The annual event is designed to engage the Harvard community in a university-level dialogue about teaching and learning innovation. -
Communicating course culture: Building on the syllabus
Karen Brennan, Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, designs her syllabus for T550: Designing for Learning by Creating to not only communicate the plan for the course, but to introduce students to the course culture. -
The hiccups, humility, and benefits of deciding to flip a course
Margo Seltzer, Herchel Smith Professor of Computer Science, flipped part of her course, CS161, “Operating Systems." -
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Women in Leadership Student Organization
The Harvard Chan WIL Student Organization offers a range of programming to prepare women for leadership roles in health care and aim to challenge, motivate, and inspire students as they explore their personal journeys toward authentic and effective leadership. Events supporting this mission include speaker series, skills-based workshops, community service, and networking events. Finally, we believe that it is critical to create a community of female leaders in health. As such, our flagship event- the annual student-alumnae conference- focuses on strengthening and growing this community. -
Harvard Chan Reel Epi Student Club
The purpose of the organization is to provide a forum for exchange of epidemiologic themes and concepts as seen in film between Harvard Chan students and faculty across all departments. We choose to watch films that pertain to topics in epidemiology and public health and discuss how these topics fit in with concepts we learn in our courses and in the real world. The main objectives are: -
John Warren Surgical Society
The John Warren Surgical Society (JWSS) at Harvard Medical School was created to foster interest in the various fields of surgery among Harvard medical and dental students. As an all-encompassing surgical society, JWSS aims to provide resources in every surgical specialty and encourages students to explore these specialties through various events and programs throughout the four years of medical and dental school. Since its inception, the JWSS has provided resources to hundreds of medical and dental students who have gone on to match in residency. Although our society has changed throughout the years, our values continue to inspire us to fulfill three goals: 1) Promote interest in surgical specialties among HMS/HSDM students 2) Integrate HMS/HSDM students into the broader community of Surgeons throughout Boston 3) Prepare HMS/HSDM students to apply to residencies in surgical specialties -
Global Surgery Student Alliance (GSSA)
For a very long time, surgery was not included in the discussion of how healthcare could be improved worldwide, especially in the most remote corners of the earth. Only recently has surgery been brought to the table, being called the “forgotten step-child” of global health by Paul Farmer and many others. At the very core, global surgery is "a field that aims to improve health and health equity for all who are affected by surgical conditions or have a need for surgical care, with a particular focus on underserved populations in countries of all income levels, as well as populations in crisis, such as those experiencing conflict, displacement, and disaster.” Important to this effort is all aspects of surgery, including anesthesia, OB/Gyn, and nursing.
