Computer Science 50, “Introduction to Ently After the Ad Board Acts
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JOHN HARVard’s JournAL “campuswide discussion about this issue.” agenda for FAS to consider teaching prac- Classroom in the Cloud • College officials will engage House tices and communications about expecta- masters and resident deans to convene on- tions and academic values; he then turned Even as David J. Malan enjoyed the news versations on academic integrity—appar- the floor over to Harris, who is the point that Computer Science 50, “Introduction to ently after the Ad Board acts. person on the whole cluster of issues, for Computer Science,” was the second-larg- • Harris met with directors of un- a more detailed outline of research and est College course this fall, with 691 under- dergraduate studies to promote clear potential FAS actions during the year. For graduates, he was contemplating a “class- language in each course syllabus and in a full report on their remarks, see http:// room” much vaster than Sanders Theatre. course assignments regarding collabora- harvardmag.com/cheating-12. By mid September, well before the October tion and other issues of academic integrity. In his August letter to students, Harris 15 launch of CS50x, the all-online version University-wide responses remain unspec- said that, beyond familiarizing themselves (cs50.net/x), some 53,000 students had en- ified at press time. with Harvard’s pertinent rules (and the rolled worldwide. The nonprofit Harvard- Faust, Smith, and Harris put these steps respective measures Smith has asked fac- MIT learning venture edX, created last May in context at the first FAS meeting of the ulty members to take in clarifying their (see “Harvard, Extended,” July-August, page year, on October 2. Faust outlined general own course practices), “More is neces- 46), has begun by offering seven free, open- principles of academic conduct, and urged sary.…We must all work together to build access, noncredit “massive open online caution in commenting while the Ad Board a community that fully embraces the ethos courses”—MOOCs as they are known—in deliberates. Smith reviewed the board’s of integrity that is the foundation of all its first fall. pedagogical role, and outlined a broader learning and discovery.” It is not a traditional semester. Much as edX courses relocate the learning location to wherever student and computer may The Endowment Eases be, set class hours dissolve as well. Two advanced computer courses offered by Berkeley (a third edX partner, announced Harvard’s endowment was valued at $30.7 billion last June 30, the end of fiscal in late July) run from late September to year 2012—a decline of $1.3 billion (4.1 percent) from the prior year. That result, late October and mid November, respec- released September 26 in Harvard Management Company’s (HMC) annual report, tively. And those tens of thousands of reflects an investment return of -0.05 percent on endowment and related assets, students learning with senior lecturer on following the robust return of 21.4 percent in fiscal 2011. The decline in the endow- computer science Malan have until next ment’s value reflects the investment return (essentially nil); minus distribution of April 15 to complete their work. endowment funds to support University operations and for other purposes (perhaps More than most of his peers, Malan is $1.5 billion; the exact sum will be reported in late October); plus gifts received. En- already skilled in extending his teach- dowment distributions account for about one-third of Harvard’s annual revenues. ing virtually—with online lecture videos, Domestic equities yielded a return of 9.65 percent, but international stocks declined sections, PDFs of handouts, discussion sharply, producing an overall return of -6.66 percent for public equities—about one- sets and quizzes, and a Google discussion third of the invested assets. Private equities and absolute-return assets (principally group. Comp Sci 50 existed in an online hedge funds)—together, about 30 percent of assets—yielded slightly positive returns. version before edX, for whoever wished to Fixed-income holdings (about 10 percent of the total) yielded 7.95 percent. Real assets follow along (see cs50.tv) and for far-flung were mixed, with strong gains in real estate, positive returns in natural resources Extension School audiences, so the transi- (timber- and farmland), and significant losses in the commodities portfolio. tion to the edX platform did not require a Peer institutions’ results demonstrated the important interplay of endowment wholly new approach to pedagogy. That investment returns, spending, and gifts from capital cam- paigns. At Yale, a 4.7 percent investment return for fiscal Harvard Management Company 2012 nearly offset distributions of about $1 billion, so the 2012 Investment Performance endowment declined only marginally during the year, from $19.4 billion to $19.3 billion. Stanford’s investments earned Asset Class HMC Return Benchmark Difference only 1 percent, but the endowment rose 3.2 percent in Return value, to $17 billion, as a surge of campaign gifts appar- ently more than offset nearly $900 million in spending. Public equities (6.66)% (9.05)% 2.39% HMC president and CEO Jane L. Mendillo cautioned Private equity 1.99 4.04 (2.05) that “at a time of unusual turbulence with significant mac- Absolute return* 0.81 (1.15) 1.96 roeconomic issues facings regions around the world… Real assets** 3.23 1.55 1.68 future returns may be uncertain,” but expressed confi- Fixed income 7.95 7.85 0.10 dence in a strategy of focusing on highly diversified invest- Total endowment (0.05) (1.03) 0.98 ments and “long-term value creation.” *Includes high-yield bonds For a detailed report on Harvard’s endowment perfor- **Includes real estate, commodities, and natural resources mance, see http://harvardmag.com/endowment-12. 44 November - December 2012 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 seems true for the other initial offerings, too—all are quantitative or scientific in nature, including the MIT circuitry course that served as the prototype last year. But edX’s aspirations span the breadth of learning, and it aims to take technologi- cally distributed education well beyond where Malan and other computer-literate teachers have already arrived. Its offices, in fact, are not on MIT’s campus (the president, Anant Agarwal, is professor of electrical engineering and computer sci- ence there), but in a Kendall Square of- fice building, surrounded by technology enterprises and budding new ventures. Although a nonprofit, edX is much more start-up than academic department or fac- David J. Malan in Sanders ulty meeting. From its inception, the staff Theatre, teaching the ARVARD NEWS OFFICE NEWS ARVARD had grown to about 35 by mid Septem- H wildly popular Computer ASE/ Science 50 ber—“zero to 60 in six months,” Agarwal H said—including an engineering team for C JON the technological platform; a content team Having taught the prototype MITx as scrolling script directly in front of the to edit course videos (with content-expert course, Agarwal has already learned that viewer. Agarwal also found that deadlines fellows to assist faculty members); a chief online teaching is “quite a bit different” “mattered a lot”: like their peers in class- scientist; a director of university partner- from the classroom and adapting a course rooms, students did assignments just be- ships (more are in the offing, he suggest- “is a lot of work.” He outlined dividing lec- fore they were due. Discussions and peer ed); and with recruiting under way for tures into “sequences” of five- to 10-minute interactions “scaled nicely” online; as stu- marketing and communications person- videos, interleaved with exercises so stu- dents asked questions and others weighed nel. Computers are set up at simple tables dents can demonstrate their understand- in, they could electronically “upvote” and chairs in open spaces that can be rap- ing. (In a talk preceding the installation problems to be addressed. (The extent to idly reconfigured, khakis and open shirts of MIT’s new president on September 21, which students helped each other learn are in fashion, and a rainbow of Post-its Agarwal spoke about “gamifying learning” was “absolutely astounding,” he said.) counts down days-to-live for each course. by providing instant feedback and offering In the evolving edX platform, such tools All this reflects fundamental differences “karma points” for helping others in the now can be deployed beside each unit of between online and classroom education. course.) Tutorials become sidebar videos the curriculum and can link to an overall The three-dozen edX staff, and participat- by teaching fellows. His course had a “vir- course discussion forum; Malan is using ing faculty members, could potentially reach tual lab,” with students manipulating elec- this technology in CS50x, and, in a simi- hundreds of thousands of students this fall. trical components on an online “bench” lar way, matching College students with Course delivery is relatively cheap (The New and testing the result with virtual tools. Comp Sci 50 teaching fellows who can York Times reported that edX uses Amazon’s Computer-generated homework was help them with specific queries. cloud computing services to deliver content machine-graded. (“Essays and free-form These online developments, Agarwal to enrollees), and marketing to students is answers are not a solved problem” yet, he said, all support a learning experience essentially free, via social media. said—posing challenges for humanities with the “same as on-campus” rigor. In courses, and prompting fact, of the 155,000 students enrolled in the Anant Agarwal, searches for peer-grading first iteration of his circuits course online, electrical engineer and other solutions.) less than 5 percent completed all the work.