Owning Participation
Michael D. Smith, PhD
John H. Finley, Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
New Course Design: Equivalent alternative to CS-50
Course Design: Fall 2020
Course Implementation: Spring 2022
Pedagogical Fellow: Salma Abu Ayyash
Pedagogical Fellow: Robert Haussman, PhD
Pedagogical Fellow: Deniz Marti, PhD
Many of us value student participation in our classes. It reflects student engagement with our course material, and it is a critical component of active learning—both of which we all know are fundamental to student learning and success. But how do we encourage students to participate meaningfully in our classes? How do we send the signal that participation matters without making it all about the grade or a game of guess-what-the-instructor-values? In answering these questions, I'll talk about a successful reboot of participation and participation grading in my discussion-focused course this past spring. Presentation - LInc Exchange - Reimagining Teaching and Learning at Harvard - View Video
The “ARC” of Assessment Design to Foster Student Participation
Michael D. Smith, PhD
John H. Finley, Jr. Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Senior Fellow of the Society of Fellows, ex officio; Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor
LInc Faculty Fellow: 2020-2021
This LInc Talk was presented with H. Deniz Marti, PhD, LInc Pedagogical Fellow
In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 and the sudden movement to online instruction forced many educators to consider whether the pedagogical methods and assessments that had worked in their in-person classrooms would work as effectively online. For us, our primary concern was to find ways to encourage and measure student participation. Historically, we had simply told the students we expected them to participate and then relied heavily on our own observations of the students’ engagement in class and with the course materials. As we moved online, this approach fell apart. A student could be deeply engaged and yet have their camera turned off. Another student may never raise their virtual hand, but would use the chat facility to make insightful comments on the material. It quickly became clear that our traditional norms around student participation were not valid in this online paradigm.
While our concerns about assessment began with participation, we quickly realized that what we were facing was a more general challenge: How do we motivate students to engage deeply with the material and lean into the types of classroom activities that will produce meaningful and long-lasting intellectual growth? This led us to investigate the principles upon which real, deep learning is based and create a theoretically-motivated framework for assessment design, which we call ARC. It stands for Autonomy, Reflection, and Community, and we used it to create an assessment approach that fostered student participation. With ARC, we created an environment where students are given the opportunity to take ownership of their learning, reflect on their participation, and feel motivated to collaborate, rather than compete, in a community of learners. In this talk, we will describe the ARC framework and our experience applying it to participation in a master’s level, discussion-based data science class in Spring 2021. We will also demonstrate how the ARC framework might be used in a different type of course. We will leave time toward the end of the session for the audience to explore how they might apply ARC to design their own assessments and guide their students toward intellectual growth.
Leveraging asymmetry in student's prior knowledge through peer learning exercises
Salil Vadhan, PhD
Vicky Joseph Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
New Course Design: Computer Science 120 Introduction to Algorithms & the Theory of Computation
Course Design: Spring 2021
Course Implementation: Fall 2021
Pedagogical Fellow: Robert Haussman, PhD
Pedagogical Fellow: Deniz Marti, PhD
Salil Vadhan, Vicky Joseph Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, LInc Faculty Fellow (2020-2021) & Lead PI on Harvard’s Privacy Tools Project, teaches COMPSCI 120: Introduction to Algorithms and their Limitations, a new introductory course in theoretical computer science “aimed at giving students the power of using mathematical abstraction and rigorous proof to understand computation with confidence.” Many computer science students are “builders” who enjoy the creative aspect of the field, yet their mathematical backgrounds are often quite diverse; to some, mathematical theory is unfamiliar. In redesigning the undergraduate computer science curriculum, it was a priority to make this “new language, reasoning, and way of thinking” accessible to students early in the program. Read More
Seizing a golden opportunity: lessons from remote-teaching a computing class
Ethimios Kaxiras, PhD
John Hasbrouck Van Vleck Professor of Pure and Applied Physics
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Course Redesign: Applied Math 10 - Computing for Scientists and Engineers
Course Redesign: Summer 2020
Course Implementation: Fall 2020
Pedagogical Fellow: Salma Abu Ayyash
Pedagogical Fellow: Robert Haussman, PhD
Before the pandemic forced everyone into remote learning, we had spent considerable time and effort to design an innovative introductory computing course for science and engineering students. The basic elements were tightly-coupled math and computing content with pre-reading assignments and in-class quizzes in every lecture, followed by in-class collaborative coding exercises in an active-learning format. The quizzes and coding exercises had been constructed to maximize team-based learning and collaboration. Transferring all this to the remote learning environment was a big challenge, especially the formation of well-functioning, productive teams. With the help of some on-line tools for pre-class assignments and assessment, and the extensive use of tools for surveying team performance and internal dynamics, we were able to provide a satisfactory learning experience. The student response (and appreciation) exceeded our expectations by a large margin. Presentation - LInc Exchange - Reimagining Teaching and Learning at Harvard - View Video
Creating Data Science Excitement for the Non-Data Scientist: Mixing 3-minute case studies with programming from scratch!
Hanspeter Pfister, PhD
An Wang Professor of Computer Science
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Course: COMPSCI 10 Elements of Data Science
Course Design: Spring 2019
Course Implementation: Spring 2020
Postdoctoral Fellow: Yuval Hart, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow: Robert Haussman, PhD
Preceptor: Salma Abu Ayyash
We created DS10 Elements of Data Science to engage and empower students who wouldn't necessarily be interested in statistics or computer science to create their own data science projects. Instead of mixing an intro statistics class, an intro CS class, and an intro communications class, we decided to teach from scratch what stats, CS, and communication skills students need to complete a data science project. Using multiple 3-minute data science case studies that match the programming and communication skills the students learn each week, the course takes a holistic look at the elements of data science./Presentation - LInc Exchange - Reimagining Teaching and Learning at Harvard - View Video
Genuinely safe learning
Todd Zickler, PhD
William and Ami Kuan Danoff Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Course: EC/CS 183: Computational Photography
Course Design: Spring 2018
Course Implementation: Spring 2020
Postdoctoral Fellow: Efrat Furst, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow: Robert Haussman, PhD
It is easy to say “there are no dumb questions.” It is harder to establish a genuine sense of safety, where all students can inquire openly without fear of judgement by instructors or peers. This is particularly true in STEM, and even more true for underrepresented groups in STEM. I describe strategies that had anecdotal success in a remote engineering course and ask if genuine safety is easier to establish when remote instead of in-person.
Presentation - LInc Exchange - Reimagining Teaching and Learning at Harvard - View Video
Designing the classroom for deeper student engagement and feedback on learning 
Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, PhD
Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Course: AM115: Mathematical Modeling
Course Redesign: Fall 2017
Course Implementation: Fall 2018
Postdoctoral Fellow: Yuval Hart, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow: Robert Haussman, PhD
L Mahadevan, Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics in SEAS, and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics in FAS used his SEAS Learning Incubator LInc Faculty Fellowship to emphasize active learning in his Mathematical Modeling course. He implemented a flipped classroom approach to enable students to come to class with problems and questions to collaborate on, time to develop their own problems from scratch, and work on modeling with peers. - More
Instrumental Lessons in Engineering 
Robert J. Wood, PhD
Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Course: ENG-SCI 25 Engineering the Acoustical World
Course Design: Spring 2017
Course Implementation: Spring 2018
Preceptor: Salma Abu Ayyash
Rob Wood, SEAS LInc Faculty Fellow and Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences has implemented his newly designed course, Engineering the Acoustical World. Adam Zewe of SEAS News covers reactions to the new course in his article, Instrumental Lessons in Engineering.