Andrew Ho, Charles William Eliot Professor of Education, is a psychometrician whose research focuses on the design and use of test scores in educational policy. Given his scholarly interest in assessment, Ho feels the pressure to “practice what I preach” in his teaching to ensure that assessments offer opportunities for student learning. In his statistics courses, Ho aims for assessments to be “genuine, relevant, and engaging acts of learning” that simulate the work educational statisticians do. He argues that it is crucial for faculty to have clarity of purpose when measuring student learning, and suggests all faculty consider the question: “Why are you assessing?” 

Vijay Janapa Reddi, Associate Professor (SEAS) and director of the Edge Computing Lab, is an applied machine learning computer architect. As a scholar with deep knowledge of how artificial intelligence (AI) works, Janapa Reddi offers a unique perspective on both the challenges and opportunities generative AI presents. Generative AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, are changing how students interact with course material and setting new standards for the skills necessary for future professional fields. While Janapa Reddi is cautious about implementing exercises that leverage such platforms in his COMPSCI 141: Computing Hardware course, he suggests that faculty seize this moment to reevaluate their teaching objectives and consider how they can support students to develop the skills they will need to navigate and use these new technologies in their careers. Imagine a future where every engineer is supported by a personalized AI assistant, offering guidance throughout their processes, enabling them to design optimal, robust, secure, and highly efficient systems.

Rebecca Nesson, Dean for Academic Programs, SEAS, and Charles R. Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, Founder of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and Principal Investigator of BKC’s Nymity project, have worked together for many years as a unique father-daughter teaching team at Harvard. Ranging from First-Year Seminars to offerings at the Law School and the Extension School, their courses focus on the deliberative practices of juries and their role in determining justice. Since 2006, the Nessons have embraced new technology in their classrooms to encourage student engagement and productive dialogue across differences as they and their students consider issues of jury bias and power in their courses. 

Rosalea Monacella, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture at the Graduate School of Design (GSD), works to create opportunities for students to build collaborative skills and facilitate peer-to-peer learning by “embed[ding] the techniques of joint problem-solving and ideas development” in her design studio courses. Monacella starts by fostering a classroom community built on mutual respect and trust, modelling and scaffolding collaborative behaviours to help students develop their unique individual capacities through collaborative work. She has found that instructors often assume that students know how to work effectively in group settings; however, oftentimes, students have never been provided with scaffolded experiences that will help them develop their group working styles.