The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning is excited to announce that as part of the enhanced instructional support for remote teaching, departments that currently do not participate in the Pedagogy Fellows Program will be invited to apply to join for the 2020–2021 academic year. Pedagogy Fellows collaborate with faculty, administration, and the Bok Center’s senior staff to enhance training and support for teaching fellows within their departments and across the FAS. Consult the...

In a typical year, the Bok Center’s Learning Lab houses multiple intergenerational working groups we call “Labs,” each dedicated to a specific medium or tool used by courses we support: realityLab for 3D modelling and VR/AR, codeLab for web development, theatreLab for performance-based assignments, and so on. This year, when courses moved online in March, we had each and every one of our student fellows and staff join a central team called distanceLab, which was tasked with developing responses to the new challenges our faculty and students were facing in teaching and learning...

During the initial, headlong rush toward online teaching in March, nearly every conversation we had with the faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates with whom we work focused on the twin challenges of maintaining continuity and community. Whether we were facilitating faculty workshops, organizing graduate student Zoom trainings, or compiling and writing materials for our new Teaching Remotely website, this focus on continuity and community was at the core of what our partners wanted and what we wanted to help...

Congratulations to all on wrapping up the Spring 2020 semester!

As a way of marking the conclusion of this extraordinary semester, the Bok Center would like to conduct very brief (5–10-minute) recorded Zoom interviews with faculty where we capture one or two quick stories/reflections from your foray into remote teaching. Our hope is to edit together brief excerpts from these reflections to create a collective portrait of your experiences. If you would be willing to lend us a few minutes, please feel free to sign up for a convenient slot at the link below, and we will be in...

On 11 March, as Harvard students hurriedly packed up their dorm rooms, attended their final face-to-face course meetings, and said tearful goodbyes to their friends and mentors, Ernest E. Monrad Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures Stephanie Sandler composed an email to her students in GENED 1057: Poetry Without Borders. Reassuring them that their course would carry on with a refreshed...

When the Harvard Art Museums closed to the public just before Spring Break, it opened new doors in the online space. With numerous course collaborations scheduled for the remainder of the semester, the museums’ staff worked to transform gallery visits and classes in the Art Study Center into interactive visual learning experiences via Zoom.... Read more about Close Encounters with Original Works of Art—Despite the Distance

When word came that courses would be moving online for the remainder of Spring 2020, Learning Lab Graduate Fellow Phil Fahn-Lai knew that the science course for which he is a Teaching Fellow would face a particular challenge. Labs in OEB 126: Vertebrate Evolution, taught by Prof. Stephanie E. Pierce, involve visits to the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, where students view and interact with fossil specimens from the Museum’s Vertebrate Paleontology collection. The labs reinforce information learned in...

In a recent article in The Crimson, Bok Center Faculty Director Rob Lue highlights the ways that the Bok Center has supported faculty throughout the transition to remote learning this spring and ways that we will continue to help faculty plan over the summer. “‘One thing that’s crucial is that the Harvard curriculum will be excellent. Everyone is committed to that,’ he said. ‘We’re going to be working super hard all summer long.’”... Read more about Preparing for the Possibility of a Remote Fall Semester

At the Bok Center we’re fortunate to be able to partner with a wide array of instructors and courses, from engineering labs to writing seminars. These partnerships take many different forms, but the one constant is the depth of our engagement. We understand that helping an instructor formulate an effective or innovative experience or assignment is only part of our job. We’re also here to help the instructor bring that idea to life, whether that means offering specialized training to Teaching Fellows, a custom-built web resource to house student work, or workshops and hackathons...

Have you used active learning in your classes? If so, ABLConnect wants to know about it!

If you have developed and used an active learning exercise in your class recently, we'd love for you to submit it to the ABLConnect Teaching Innovator Prize, which celebrates Harvard University instructors who develop and use active learning in their classrooms! This year we are especially interested in submissions related to remote learning....

With instruction moving online and her students departing Harvard for destinations spread all across the globe, Coolidge Professor of History Maya Jasanoff was looking for a way to keep her students connected to Harvard and to each other by incorporating their experiences into GENED 1014: Ancestry. Recalling a successful in-class activity from earlier in the term focused on the ancestry of Harvard houses, Jasanoff decided to create a new assignment that would let students explore, analyze, and share the ways in which ancestry has marked their current locations.... Read more about Ancestry Postcards

On the morning of Tuesday, 10 March, Harvard’s faculty, students, and staff logged on to their email to find unprecedented news from president Larry Bacow: in just under two weeks (including Spring Break), Harvard would move instruction online, with the vast majority of its students off campus and taught remotely through Zoom, Canvas, and other digital means. The university’s sudden move to remote teaching and learning was obviously tremendously disruptive to students, who had to pack their belongings and...