John Harvard's Journal

length at harvardmag.com/faustexit-17. As Shirley M. Tilghman) and said, “We’d be • the principal opportunities and is customary, will publish a crazy not to get the benefit of that.” Bacow challenges likely to face Harvard and full review of President Faust’s administra- and Tilghman will obviously be directly in- higher education in the coming years tion at its conclusion, following what may volved, Lee continued, and he expects that and the priorities that our new presi- well be an eventful final year. Keohane’s continued counsel will be sought dent should have most in mind; as well. • the qualities and experience …and the Search Consistent with past practice, three most important in the next presi- In a conversation on June 14, Lee com- Overseers will join the Corporation mem- dent; [and] mented on organizing a search to ensure bers, making a 15-person search commit- • any individuals you believe war- that “the transition is smooth and in the tee. The full roster was released in a July 11 rant serious consideration as possible best interest of Harvard.” It will differ from message from Lee to the community. He also candidates. prior searches because the Corporation now announced that following the precedents Comments may be directed to psearch@ comprises a dozen members plus the pres- set in 2006, when the search for a succes- harvard.edu or mailed to Harvard Univer- ident (who will not be involved)—twice sor to Lawrence H. Summers resulted in sity Presidential Search Committee, Loeb the size of earlier Faust’s appointment, faculty and student House, 17 Quincy Street, Cambridge, Mas- cohorts. Lee said advisory committees will again be formally sachusetts 02138. the enlarged Cor- organized—joined this time by a commit- Further details on the search appear at poration brings to tee of staff members. Lee solicited perspec- harvardmag.com/prezsearch-17. the task broader tives on: vjohn s. rosenberg “experience, exper- tise, and judgment” than were avail- born to mothers who smoked were health- able to the senior Making a MOOC ier than those born to mothers who didn’t. governing board in Could maternal smoking be beneficial for 2006-2007, and more A well-known public-health anecdote, some infants—or is there some other ex- channels through the birth-weight paradox, is often used to planation? Hernán, the Kolokotrones pro- William F. which to reach out illustrate how cause and effect can become fessor of biostatistics and epidemiology, Lee STEPHANIE MITCHELL/HPAC STEPHANIE for ideas and sug- tangled: “You probably know that mater- teaches students how to use a tool called a gestions. He also noted the “unique” asset nal smoking during pregnancy is associated causal diagram—an intuitive picture that of having four university leaders affiliated with increased infant mortality. What you maps the causal structure of problems—to with the Corporation (Faust; Wellesley may not know,” explains Miguel Hernán, “is clarify what is really going on. (The answer: and Duke president emerita Nannerl O. that maternal smoking is associated with a the other causes of low birth-weight are as- Keohane, whose service concluded June lower risk of mortality among infants who sociated with health problems more severe 30; Tufts president emeritus Lawrence S. had a low birth weight.” In other words, in than those caused by maternal smoking.) Bacow; and Princeton president emerita a cohort of low-birth-weight babies, those Hernán is a hot property: a leading, and

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 The former Holyoke Center’s rear entry was razed during its makeover into ; surrounding streets gave way to heavy work on , and finish work at Winthrop, including new faculty-dean quarters—all part of undergrad- uate House renewal. In addition (though not shown): Lavietes Pavilion will reemerge for fall baskeball; the Sackler Museum is being renovated for new users; and Soldiers Field Park renovation continues. And smaller nips and tucks, as at Grays Hall in (for a serenity room and BGLTQ offices), were undertaken, too.

charismatic, exponent of these causal dia- ers into the subject quickly—open each grams, which in the past 20 years have be- of the course’s five lessons, and are one of come critical tools for assessing the effec- the major changes in pedagogical approach tiveness of treatment strategies and policy Hernán has made to adapt his course for interventions in the health and social sci- HarvardX. (HX project lead April Opolin- ences. Now, as one of a small number of er advocated the “hook” strategy.) With- Harvard faculty members each year whose in each lesson, five seven-minute videos time and expense of traveling to teach this course is selected to become a MOOC (a produced in the HX studio expand on the fundamental introductory material. FROM HARVARD TOP LEFT: MAGAZINE/JC; JIM HARRISON(3); HARVARD MAGAZINE/JC massive, online, open course), he is about problem introduced in the hook; a closing to go global. Just 20 new courses are chosen video then demonstrates how causal dia- In the HarvardX studio, Hernán stands by a faculty review committee annually, all grams are used to resolve it. Supplement- in front of a greenscreen, as technicians pre- of them ultimately offered to learners in at ing these lessons are case studies shot on pare to shoot the first video of the course. least one free version—part of Harvard’s location at HSPH in which Hernán inter- It’s early 2016. A boom mike hangs from the commitment to improve access to edu- views leading public-health scholars. Be- ceiling, just out of frame. “3-1, take 4,” calls cation globally through HarvardX (HX), cause causal diagrams can be applied to out HX videographer Alex Auriema. Craaack! the University’s online course initiative. problems in many disciplines, he hopes The arm of the clapperboard snaps down, Hernán’s course is based on Epidemiology in a future version to expand the cases to signaling a new scene. It is Hernán’s first (EPI) 289: “Models for Causal Inference,” include interviews with faculty members day in front of the camera, and the videog- the core offering he’s taught for 14 years at from outside the health sciences. raphers have been prepping him, adjusting the Harvard Chan School of Public Health Faculty members typically spend 96 to his clothes, attaching a microphone to his (HSPH). Harvard Magazine accompanied 142 hours helping produce and run an eight- shirt, taking his eyeglasses on and off, offer- Hernán during the making of his MOOC week MOOC, according to HarvardX es- ing him water, repositioning lights, adding a to find out what it takes to produce one, timates. The production of Hernán’s—its diffuser, running sound checks, and marking and how that compares to creating a tra- pacing dictated by his availability amid a the floor with colored tape to ensure repeat- ditional course. packed schedule of lectures in the United ability in the perfect positioning of equip- Examples of other real-world public- States and abroad—will have spanned 20 ment—a whirl of activity. Hernán says he’s health problems like the birth-weight par- months, a bit longer than usual. But when a little nervous, too, even though he knows adox—“hooks” to engage and draw learn- complete, it will free him from much of the the material so well that he gives three near-

Harvard Magazine 17

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 's Journal vardX has been one of the University’s fast- est growing units since its launch in May 2012. It can handle about 40 projects at any given time—20 new courses per year, plus “reboots,” or revisions to existing offerings. (HX generally commits to two such revi- sions for each course it produces). Millions of people have registered for at least one of its more than 100 courses; a third of enroll- ees who responded to a pre-course survey identify themselves as current or former edu- cators interested in continuing education. Among the University’s goals in support- ing the production of courses like Hernán’s is maximizing their “reach” as part of “Har- vard’s contribution to a rising tide of edu- cation globally,” says HX faculty director Robert Lue. He has long been interested in experimenting with hybrid education- al models that incorporate technology: his Biovisions project, dating to 1999, uses ani- STU ROSNER mations of molecular and cellular biological HarvardX project leader April Opoliner tial students, without having to clear copy- processes in teaching, and is now widely with Kolokotrones professor of biostatis- right. (For an HX course designed for global deployed in public schools. Another goal tics and epidemiology Miguel Hernán and teaching assistant Barbra Dickerman distribution, copyrights are critical. HX cur- is conducting research: “HarvardX repre- rently tracks 19,000 copyrights it has permis- sents a wonderful sandbox to explore new perfect takes, all on the same subject, almost sion to use in its database.) possibilities at the interface of learning and without repeating himself. But he and the Jennifer Walker, video editor for the proj- technology,” he says. The third objective— HarvardX team for this course, shepherded ect, stitches together the best takes from each which Hernán already practices—is creat- by project leader Opoliner, are perfectionists. filming session. A former theater manager for ing content to benefit residential students. The fourth take is the keeper. live performances at the House of Blues, she Like Lue, Hernán has been interested in ex- Opoliner, S.D. ’13, took this very class with also assists as a second videographer dur- perimenting with different modes of teaching Hernán, as a student. Energetic, creative, and ing dual-camera location shoots at Hernán’s for some time. After adding live polling to his upbeat, she will coordinate translating and HSPH office. That snap of the clapperboard? campus classes—stopping a lecture for five simplifying the course for an online format. During later editing on Walker’s computer to 10 minutes to ask questions—he observed It takes a team of skilled professionals—HX screen, it appears as a dramatic vertical spike that this changed the classroom dynamic be- employs a staff of about 45, including manag- in the visual representation of the sound file, cause instruction was “no longer one way.” ers, videographers, graphic designers, digital allowing her to easily align the video and au- Working with HX is a natural progression editors, and even a copyright attorney and an dio tracks. (She also creates animations of the that lets him experiment with other new accessibility coordinator (who helps make causal diagrams that are key to this course, pedagogical approaches, whether for inter- the materials usable for sight- and hearing- bringing static images to life on the screen.) national audiences or students in . impaired learners)—to make each MOOC, at a cost that ranges widely, depending on the Tucked in an off-street building between nature of the course and the sites of location Mount Auburn and Brattle streets, Har- shoots. This one cost about $100,000 to make. Producing a typical lec- ture course, by contrast, is something Hernán can do largely alone. He can also assign readings that are freely accessible at the library to residen-

Words to inspire outside the HarvardX studio. Manager Sarah Grafman on location JONATHAN SHAW (2) SHAW JONATHAN

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 He is especially eager to find out how the course will fare with nonresidential learn- HARVARD PORTRAIT ers, because with an online offering, “you can lose students at any time. If they get bored, they will stop watching. You have to construct your course in a different way.” A video lecture therefore becomes a short unit in which to make one point, “not five. Because if I try to make five points, I need 50 minutes.” The hooks—the real-world ap- plications—mean that “I start each lesson by telling students why this is important, why they should keep watching….You are in a competition for attention, which doesn’t happen as much in a live setting.” HSPH and (HMS) students have been receptive to the videos. This past January, a year into the MOOC project, Hernán began assigning seven-minute, single-concept modules from that course’s first lesson as pre-class home- work in two residential courses. He sought feedback from the students on the presenta- tion, and their assessment of this “flipped” approach: learning a concept by watching a video before class, then discussing it with the professor in class rather than listening to a lecture. From Hernán’s perspective, the flipped approach lets him use his “face-to- face teaching time in a more effective way”: he doesn’t have to “start every time from the basics and build up.” Even in draft form, he declares, “the effect has been amazing. You just assign the lesson, and then discuss real- world problems” in class, using causal dia- Sunil Amrith grams as tools to dissect them. In the past, he says, that point in the learning process came “Picture the Bay of Bengal as an expanse of tropical water: still and blue in the calm so late, the course was nearly over. of the January winter, or raging and turbid with silt at the peak of the summer rains,” Flipped classrooms do come with caveats. writes historian Sunil Amrith in Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Peter Bol—who as vice provost for advances Fortunes of Migrants. “Now imagine the sea as a mental map: as a family tree of cousins, in learning oversees HX; the Harvard Ini- uncles, sisters, sons, connected by letters and journeys and stories.” Crossing’s ambitious tiative for Teaching and Learning (HILT); mental map tells the story of how one in four people in the modern world came to live and a research group run by professor of in countries that border the Bay—a sea echoing with a fugue of languages from Malay government Dustin Tingley (Harvard Por- to Portuguese, Arabic to Dutch. An elegant wordsmith whose research and writing trait, July-August 2016, page 23)—says that have earned him major awards from the European Research Council and the British studies of flipped classrooms (including his Academy, Amrith credits novelists Michael Ondaatje and Amitav Ghosh’s stories of own ChinaX course) have shown that they migration with influencing his outlook as an historian. His own biography is peripatetic: improve learning, but at the cost of creating born in Kenya to parents from the Bay-bounded south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, much more work for students. schooled first in Singapore, and then at Cambridge, where his “dream job at 18 was So far, however, reaction among residen- working for the UN.” But history let him explain issues he cares about, and led him to tial students has been overwhelmingly posi- stay in Cambridge for a doctorate, focused on global-health organizations in India and tive, reports Barbra Dickerman, a teaching Southeast Asia. He came to Harvard in 2015 as Mehta professor of South Asian studies assistant in several of Hernán’s courses at and professor of history, and will become chair of South Asian studies in 2018. He hopes HSPH and HMS. “Students loved how they the department can convey “the vitality and excitement of studying South Asia” in the could go back and re-watch and revisit; twenty-first century through collaborations across disciplines and regional boundar- that’s something you can’t always do in the ies—goals he’s pursuing as co-director of the Center for History and Economics and classroom setting. Further, students come in classes co-taught with colleagues in East Asian studies. vspencer lenfield to class having already watched the videos,

Photograph by Jim Harrison Harvard Magazine 19

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal which leaves more time for active learning of barriers that keep people from being here News Briefs through discussion and application.” HX in the classroom.” And it optimizes resources: hired Dickerman, a critical support in pro- “For example, it seems obvious, but there’s Social Club Ban? ducing the course, to help develop creative only one Miguel Hernán. And he can either In July, a Harvard committee recommend- materials for the animations, illustrations, teach a class of 70” once a year, “or develop ed banning students from joining any final hooks, cases, and so on. this course that reaches many more around club or other unrecognized social organiza- Reflecting on what she has learned by the world and across different disciplines.” tion, whether gender neutral in its member- working on this MOOC, Dickerman cites, Though the full, online course will launch ship practices or not. The ban, modeled on above all, how “to present information con- around the time this magazine goes to press, one at Williams College, would take effect cisely.” In addition, she has a new apprecia- Hernán is already pleased because the resi- beginning with students entering in the fall tion for “the power of visuals and graph- dential students who’ve used those online of 2018, and effectively end undergraduate participation in off-campus social organi- The use of “hooks” to engage and draw learn- zations by 2022. Prior committees charged with studying ers into the subject quickly are among the ma- the impact of such organizations on under- graduate life published reports seeking to jor changes in Hernán’s pedagogical approach. link them to sexual assault, and cited gender discrimination as the source of their nega- ics and movement to augment the content modules are learning more. “Instead of spend- tive social impacts. But the ban proposed that’s being spoken. I think that is a pow- ing 90 percent of the course listening to me by the current committee of faculty mem- erful advantage over the classroom setting.” lecture,” he points out, they watch a 10-min- bers, administrators, and students pivots And she, too, praises the MOOC advantage ute video, “and then we spend 90 percent of to an expanded rationale: these organiza- of allowing students to move through the the course in scientific discussion. It’s com- tions “go against the educational mission material at their own pace. pletely different, the level at which they ab- and principles espoused by Harvard Univer- “I think this kind of format is going to be a sorb the material. They are asking questions sity.” Citing student comments submitted big part of the future of education,” she con- that they were not asking before.” as part of an earlier survey (rather than the tinues. “It’s effective. It breaks down all kinds vjonathan shaw survey data itself), the latest report argues

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