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Explore the Harvard Future of Teaching and Learning Task Force Report
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The Harvard Future of Teaching and Learning (FTL) task force report draws together many lessons and solutions adopted during the height of the pandemic. It begins by identifying the infrastructure and expertise that made it possible for Harvard to swiftly and effectively pivot to online instruction. It then describes key innovations and the considerations of student needs that helped teaching and learning continue, and in some cases flourish, across schools and divisions. It concludes with concrete recommendations and a strategic roadmap for Harvard’s teaching and learning future and outline key enablers of that vision. Read full report.
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Into Practice
Timely teaching advice and research findings
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Practicing complex, new skills in a supportive environment
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 Linda Kaboolian, Instructor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, teaches Negotiations for public health students who will continue to practice these skills in everyday and high-stakes settings all around the world. “I’m a social scientist,” she explains, “so I’m very concerned about how to modify practice as a negotiator to be relevant to the context you’re working with.” Kaboolian underscores the importance of understanding the power dynamics and cultural context at play before negotiating. She designs stylized cases steeped in research on culture and scaffolded in complexity, building from one-on-one discussions to multi-stakeholder, multi-issue dilemmas. |
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The benefits: Students have overwhelmingly found the skills in this class to be fruitful for navigating both personal and professional settings. Kaboolian establishes a safe space to practice strategies they are not comfortable with so they have a broader set to draw on and can approach negotiations from a place of self-reflection and centeredness. She frequently gets calls from a range of students to celebrate how applying course materials led to successful milestones like starting salaries, book publishing deals, and residency selections.
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“That’s what education is: putting people at the edge of discomfort and then creating a space for them to take that risk.”
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The challenges: Conducting this course online last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic was difficult to navigate. Kaboolian notes that vulnerability is essential to learning new negotiation strategies. Some students found it challenging to be vulnerable digitally while others were more comfortable being vulnerable via Zoom than in-person. To navigate this unbalance, she leaned on guidance on remote teaching and facilitation, which she notes helped produce “astoundingly” positive student feedback.
Takeaways and best practices
- Peer interaction and feedback are essential. “Students care a lot about what their peers have to say and think, in many ways more than they might care about the instructor’s opinions.” Eliciting feedback from peers about how a negotiation went—for instance, how they reacted to a given strategy—and then giving the student an opportunity to reflect on how they might revise their approach in real-time can alter students’ opinions and behaviors in ways instructor-only feedback could not.
- Set clear classroom norms and take a problem-solving approach. When dealing with materials that impact students, as Kaboolian describes, “below the neck,” it is especially essential to generate and agree to clear classroom norms to ensure that people treat each other with mutual respect. In addition, when students share views that others might disagree with, Kaboolian takes a “problem-solving approach,” asking the student to think through how to address it in changing circumstances so everyone can learn from the moment.
- Use assessments that evaluate students where they are. With the range of styles, Kaboolian finds that “comparative” assessments of how much a student got from a negotiation doesn’t productively capture what students learn when things don’t work out. Rather, she invites conversations when things fall flat, and instead assesses students on how and whether they were able to achieve their goals for themselves in that given context.
Bottom line: Kaboolian emphasizes that every class, no matter the content, should reflect on how to support students in moving “from fear to enthusiasm.” This should include both creating both tasks that meet and challenge students where they are, as well as an environment that will catch them when they fail. “That’s what education is,” she reflects, “putting people at the edge of discomfort and then creating a space for them to take the risk.”
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Check out McMillan and Moore’s (2020) article on “how making mistakes and learning errors are essential to achievement, as well as the development of positive dispositions such as persistence, resilience, and risk-taking”
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Struggling to find instructional resources that support what you need? Consider consulting with the Harvard Librarians, who can support you in finding materials and multimedia tools for your classroom.
Instructional Moves (IM) featured faculty member Brian Mandell, who leads an advanced negotiations workshop at Harvard Kennedy School, immerses students in complex, multiparty simulations. Designed to be intense and realistic, these simulations prepare students for real-world negotiations they may soon undertake in their professional lives. Peer feedback after simulations is also central to the learning process in Mandell’s course.
Read the Bok Center’s guidance on group agreements to learn more about how to create healthy and supportive classroom norms.
Apply through the Harvard Office for Undergraduate Education for course innovation funds to design new resources for your own classroom.
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Phuong Pham
Assistant Professor and Director of Humanitarian Studies
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Benjamin Sommers
Professor of Health Policy and Economics
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Paul B. Bottino
Co-Founder, Executive Director, and Lecturer at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard
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L Mahadevan
Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics in SEAS, and Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and of Physics in FAS
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