The Bok Center is proud to be a partner on the second iteration of the Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art (SITSA).  Staff and fellows from across the Bok Center collaborated with our colleagues at the Harvard Art Museums in the areas of curriculum, assignment, and activity design as well as the pop-up studio pictured in the article.... Read more about Bok Partners with Harvard Art Museums on Summer Institute

On May 2, the Bok Center hosted our second annual Spring Showcase, featuring the amazing ways in which our faculty and student partners are transforming teaching at Harvard.  The Bok Center has created a vibrant intergenerational community of teachers and learners, who have worked tirelessly throughout the year to create inspiring and innovative courses and programs.... Read more about Spring Showcase a Smashing Success

When Ofrit Liviatan attended the second of three Bok Faculty Lunches on Active Learning in the spring 2016 semester, it was a remark from a literature professor she didn’t know that made the greatest impact.  The faculty presenter was philosophy professor Bernhard Nickel, explaining how he led students in creative exercises to construct a philosophical argument from a text.  The literature professor raised her hand and said that she did it entirely differently because, after all, she wasn’t looking so much for the philosophical elements of a text.  “What surprised you most?” might be a question she asked instead.

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At the May 5 kick-off event for the Bok Center’s 40th anniversary celebration, former Harvard president Derek Bok recalled his first speech to the faculty, in 1971 when his term began, which he devoted to the subject of teaching.  Afterward Bok spoke to his friend the eminent physicist Gerald Holton, “and I asked him, Gerry, how did it go?  And he said, well, 80 percent of the faculty have given up on you.”

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In fall 2015, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health began its first “blended” master’s degree in public health, combining online course work withthree-week residences at the start, middle and end of the two-year program, the first degree of its type at Harvard.  The program was committed to ensuring excellence consistent with its residential MPH program in terms of academic rigor, students’ exposure to teaching staff and developing camaraderie within their cohort.  The 50 students, each with a master’s or doctoral degree, and 60 percent of them physicians, were strong academically, but most of them had demanding full-time jobs across the country and even abroad.  How would Harvard keep them engaged with coursework and facilitate collaboration across borders and time zones?

... Read more about Bok Assessment: Using Feedback to Improve Learning

The first assignment, for the General Education course on “Primitive Navigation,” was for students to start at the John Harvard statue in the Yard, walk due west for what seemed 20 minutes with no tools or aids including a watch or phone, and see where they ended up.  Probably students had an inkling this wasn’t going to end well.  They would end up all over the greater Harvard Square area, knowing they were “lost.”  So what?

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The ABLConnect Teaching Innovator Prize celebrates Harvard University instructors for their development and use of active learning exercises in their classes, and we would love to post a teaching activity you used in class to the website.... Read more about ABLConnect Teaching Innovator Prize Application Now Open