News

Sam Benkelman

Celebrating Senior Learning Lab Undergraduate Fellows

May 29, 2020

Learning Lab Undergraduate Fellows (or LLUFs) are a core part of the intergenerational team at the Bok Center’s Learning Lab. LLUFs often have terrific intuitions about the pedagogy that will most engage and appeal to their peers, and they use this expertise as learners to help the Bok Center’s faculty partners design and test new learning experiences for their courses. Given the fact that many of these assignments and activities involve new or at least alternative modes of communication—drawing, speaking, coding, 3D...

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Lexi, Emily, and Kate sitting around a table making silly faces at the camera.

Moving Online, Not Apart: Culture and Communication Consultants Engage with International TFs

May 27, 2020

As we’ve transitioned to remote teaching, our undergraduate fellows have been important partners in supporting our programming. The Professional Communication Program for International Teachers and Scholars has a team of ten undergraduate Culture and Communication Consultants (CCCs), whose work this semester helped us maintain our connection to campus and to each other. The CCCs...

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UPFs Ashley and Skylar deliver a faculty workshop.

Student Identities Online: Equity and Access in the Zoom Classroom

May 22, 2020

March and April are always a busy time for the Bok Center’s nine Undergraduate Pedagogy Fellows (UPFs). In the pre-COVID-19 era, they would spend these months visiting departments and programs across the FAS, delivering workshops on student identities and classroom power dynamics to Teaching Fellows (TFs) and faculty. This year, instead, they found themselves moving their work online. As the semester comes to a close, the UPFs reflect on how online teaching and learning has surfaced new ways for them to help instructors think about the undergraduate experience.

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The Showcase Must Go On: Pedagogy Fellows’ Capstone Projects Go Virtual

May 21, 2020

As classes at Harvard moved online, so too did the Bok Center’s Pedagogy Fellows Program, comprising 33 experienced and creative graduate students who support their peers in their roles as undergraduate teachers. Pedagogy Fellows (PFs) collaborate with faculty, department administrators, and the Bok Center’s senior staff to enhance training and support for teaching fellows within their departments and across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences by leading pedagogy seminars and workshops, consulting with TFs, and developing...

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distanceLab: Reimagining Remote Learning Together

May 19, 2020

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...

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Walking the Walk: The Bok Center's Efforts to Sustain Community in a Remote Work Environment

May 15, 2020

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...

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Faculty: Share your Reflections on Remote Teaching

May 14, 2020

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...

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Lessons from Game Design: How should students "play" your syllabus?

May 12, 2020

In our latest installment from the Learning Lab’s gameLab team, Graduate Fellow Clarisse Wells introduces two gaming concepts, Metagaming and Speedrunning, where players draw on their accumulated experience in order to optimize game mechanics and exploit trends in gameplay to create advantages and complete new challenges. While this might sound like “cheating,” in these posts...

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Poetry Without Borders—or a Classroom

May 11, 2020

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...

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Close Encounters with Original Works of Art—Despite the Distance

May 8, 2020

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