All right.
So now we're going to romp through a series
of these projects.
And as we do, I'm hoping that when we look at the team--
the project teams-- that members of those project teams
will stand up and turn around so that everyone else can
see them.
So that when we have the reception
they know who to go and talk with.
Oh, this was the little exhibit to say,
we're not going to talk about enrollment view.
Because we've already talked about enrollment view.
And then when we get to the physics learning outcomes,
we're going to have a little deeper dive
with that particular project.
But we're going to start with common competencies
for a master's redesign.
So Matt Miller, Becca Miller--
no relation, sitting on opposite sides of the room
but working very closely with their colleagues--
helped the School of Education get to a place
where in May they voted successfully
on a curricular reform for the master's programs
at the school.
And I think it took a lot of work
and a lot of thinking to get there.
And I want us to just imagine some of the challenges here.
A masters student who comes to the school
could choose one of 13 different tracks.
There are about 700 that come from master's programs.
And you're just on campus for one year.
How do how do you think about a professional school
and education and imagine each of those different tracks
and educating them to have the competencies to go out and do
what they need to do in a bunch of different ways
and a bunch of different kinds of professions?
So at the Ed School people--
the students, as I understand it, they come in--
and it's not like undergraduates coming into a core program
and learning what it is that they want to do.
They're professional students.
They have some ideas about what they want to do.
But they come from all different kinds of backgrounds.
And some people want to be data scientists.
And some people want to be policymakers.
And some people want to be educators.
And some people want to be superintendents.
And there's different ways that you might come in and want
to use a master's program.
So part of the curriculum redesign
was a set of discussions about what
are the core competencies, that faculty can agree on,
should cross all of these.
But how can we now using technology, using
what we understand about pedagogy,
actually think through how to deliver that in a personalized,
individualized way for students who
come from different backgrounds and need
to go into different places?
So it's a tough set of problems.
And I'm focusing on it a little bit,
because I think it's a set of problems
that many of our schools struggle with--
many of the professional schools in particular.
You have people who are coming in
and all of these different backgrounds,
and they need to go out into these different ways,
but you have to as a school say what
are these core competencies?
And how might we deliver education flexibly
in individualized ways to be able to get them
through and learn from the time while they're on campus,
which isn't very long?
So how do we allow learners flexibility
as they're attained the same professional competencies,
leverage technology and data to support diverse adult learners,
prepare professionals for an evolving career in education?
And the key constituents here are master's degree students,
faculty, staff, and alumni.
And you can see where they see this process.
Goals by next year.
Launch a first foundational course, how people learn.
And this is, I think, a really remarkable experiment--
the how people learn course.
Which I think is a collaboration with other people in VPAL,
and is being built right now as an individualized, flexible
program.
And it relates to all of our interests.
And many people here have an interest
in what are pre-matriculation materials that
could be provided before people even get on campus?
So in addition, they're thinking about, as part
of a kind of curriculum mapping project, learner profiles.
How individual students can identify where they want to go,
what their course progression looks
like, and the kinds of things that they
may be taking on in competencies as they go through the program.
How that as a data source might relate to other data sources
in the school allowing for more visibility as you're
going rapidly through a set of courses.
Hopes for curriculum mapping at Harvard--
collaborative exploration and innovation
around personalized competency based professional education.
So Nearest Neighbors, also an Ed School project.
Andrew Ho.
This was Andrew's brainchild, I believe, partly
as GSE faculty member-- partly as faculty chair
of the VPAL research committee.
And some of the questions are, who
are the students that are in your class, what
other classes are they taking?
And what should I know from the faculty members who
are teaching those classes about what they're
doing in their classroom that I can leverage and optimize when
I'm teaching in my classroom?
How can we make it pretty easy and quick for people
to learn from one another?
If you begin to nurture these neighborhoods of instructors,
can we call--
can we create some coherency, even more coherency, and maybe
some ways of teaching that make better use of people's time?
So at the moment, this is being used by HGSE faculty,
but next year, your school.
So this, like some of the other projects that Dustin
was talking about, it wouldn't be
that hard to adapt and to move into different schools
and different kinds of programs.
So it's in a phase of user testing.
Can people read the print on this?
Yes.
All right.
So you can see that the way this visual works is you've
got the course in the center, which
is read being your course.
And you can see in the previous semester
what percentage of your students were in these other classes.
And what percentage in the current semester
were in these other classes.
And you can also begin to use these data to project forward--
to predict what percentage might be in other classes.
And by June, full integration of this Nearest Neighbors
visual data set with VPAL instructor tools, emails
to instructors answering who's your nearest neighbor
and what do good neighbors do for each other?
That sounds sort of Mr Rogers like.
Hopes for a curriculum mapping at Harvard.
Clear focus on the question, whose question
are we answering?
Yes, I agree.
And how actionable is the answer?
OK.
Science advising.
Logan-- Logan is director of science education
and, as you can see there, has other titles as well.
Is an amazing instructor.
And the questions here are, which structures and systems
will nurture and support undergraduate research?
How do we meaningfully connect undergraduate research
to the curricular experience?
Which skills and competencies should we
be fostering and assessing from students research experience?
Science concentration advisors are a key constituency group--
undergraduate students and research mentors.
And from what I understand, as you
began to think about this work and this project and making
research experience for undergraduates
more visible to science advisors,
you maybe worked with Harvard College institutional research,
got some data, and saw that 90% of undergraduates in the life
sciences have done some sort of research experience
during their time at Harvard.
And in the largest undergraduate biology concentrations,
70% of undergraduate research is done not at FAS,
but at the School of Public Health, the medical school
and affiliated hospitals.
The kinds of things that you wouldn't
know unless you're making these sorts of data
accessible and visible.
And then into the awareness of science advisors.
So this, of course, raises questions, as well,
about the oversight, and if we're
capitalizing on undergraduate research work
that's being already done in the best possible way.
Goals by June 2019.
A mix of top down and bottom up data collection
or an undergraduate research in science.
Making data accessible and useful
to inform advising about research and courses.
And hopes for curriculum mapping at Harvard-- students
make more informed decisions about the research,
make more connections research, and the rest of the curriculum.
I don't know how we do that, but I think
it's incredibly important.
And we hear all the time how important that is.
How do these research experiences
integrate with the rest of the curriculum?
So I'm now going to step down and let
us have a little break from my droning
on and hear a little bit more depth from Logan and Louis
about this last in this category of the curriculum mapping
projects.