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Into Practice
Timely teaching advice and research findings
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Transferring best practices across teaching modes
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HIGHLIGHT: Rethinking your pedagogy for different modes of instruction has the potential to unlock new insights for your teaching practice that benefit students across your courses, whether in-person or online.
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 Aisha Yousafzai, Associate Professor of Global Health, launched the Early Childhood Development: Global Strategies for Implementation HarvardX course in 2021. This self-paced, asynchronous course is designed for practitioners of public health to learn about program and policy development and has enrolled over 31,000 students. Yousafzai has taught a range of course formats during her time at Harvard: residential, hybrid, online, and now an asynchronous HarvardX course. Each course type “requires its own thought process about the right pedagogy,” but Yousafzai believes that careful consideration of the various strategies available for each course and what works has enriched the learning environment across her courses.
The benefits: Yousafzai points to an array of ways the creation of her HarvardX course benefited her in-person courses. In reviewing her curriculum for the online platform and wider audience, she began drawing on more sources of learning materials. For example, in addition to traditional journal articles, she now also draws on short films/visuals and podcasts. The online course also prompted her to employ a greater range of discussion methods in residential courses. Lastly, Yousafzai notes that preparing for the online course opened up her thinking around inviting guest speakers to her residential courses. By using Zoom, “we were able to improve the diversity and experiences of guest speakers, so students were able to engage with experts and leaders in the field from a range of contexts” in a way that hadn’t been done before.
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“The key is not to assume that what works in one course is going to work for the other, but to really think about how you need to create a distinct course with distinct approaches to delivering learning.”
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The challenges: Yousafzai notes that adapting a residential course for online learning does require adjustments. “I don’t think you can just take what you do in person and move it online,” but in an asynchronous class there are opportunities for inclusivity by increasing the number of those who can access a Harvard course, reducing language barriers with subtitles, and creating a learning environment that embraces the students’ different backgrounds and the experiences they bring to the course. Creating a curriculum that is truly “global” is also an ambitious endeavor that encourages ongoing conversations about future developments.
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Takeaways and best practices
- Expand participation modes. While live discussions in class had been the primary way to participate in Yousafzai’s courses, creating the online course expanded her view of course participation. Students can now contribute in discussion boards online, which makes the course more inclusive for different types of learners and allows more students to participate asynchronously.
- Tap into guest speakers. Whether a course is offered in person or in a pre-recorded online format, Yousafzai encourages faculty to tap into the vast network of experts in their field rather than limiting themselves to speakers who can come to Boston. By embracing Zoom interviews, students gain a better understanding of the diversity in the field, faculty can “showcase global knowledge,” and students gain a more complete vision of “richness of learning” in their field.
- Prepare the guest speakers. Yousafzai recommends discussing the session theme with the guest in advance to ensure everyone is on the same page, sharing the expert’s profile with students if the session will be live and requesting questions in advance, and providing links to further research from the guest for students to explore. This practice encourages more students to participate because they can prepare in advance.
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Related Teaching Efforts
Instructional Moves (IM) featured faculty member Tina Grotzer (HGSE) provides multiple ways for her students to engage in classroom discourse. She uses online discussion boards and often brings comments and questions from them into her in-person classes. She also holds regular in-person sessions for students outside of class times. These practices allow her students more opportunities to make their voices heard. As one student explains, “I'm a really quiet student, and so a lot of times there are questions I want to ask, but [...] by the time I decide to ask it, we've moved on. [...] To have different ways in which I can ask those questions was really helpful.”
Brian Mandell leads an advanced negotiations workshop at Harvard Kennedy School. The Instructional Moves (IM) featured faculty member regularly invites guest lecturers into his classroom to share their real-world expertise with students. These guests deepen students’ understanding of the complex dynamics at the negotiation table. As one of his students explains, “Bringing in speakers who have participated in negotiations all across the world really makes it real for students who are thinking about what their future careers are going to be and how they really might be in rooms where lives are at stake.”
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Relevant Research
The paper “Understanding Lived Experiences of Faculty in an Increasingly Digitized World” indicates that by working with instructional designers, education researchers, and creative professionals, instructors are able to create more accessible, scientifically driven learning instances, many of which have applications in residential classrooms.
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Related Resources and Opportunities
To learn more about creating a course for HarvardX, check out VPAL’s Principles for Faculty and learn more about applying to develop a course here.
Check out this guide on teaching remotely and on designing courses for online instruction.
Learn more about the science of remote learning.
For help expanding the range of formats and access points for your course materials, ask to be connected with the liaison or subject librarian for your course. Once you’ve chosen what to assign, Library Reserves can find or create a digital copy for your students.
Read this Faculty Focus article on “Getting the Most out of Guest Experts” and this Instructional Moves resource on Contextualizing Learning with Guest Speakers.
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