“One of the ways we could gradually strengthen the culture of teaching at Harvard generally is to put more focus on the way we teach our PhD students to prepare for their teaching, which addresses exactly what you said isn’t systematically done. . . . I think that would not only have the benefit of…
“When people see success, they want to emulate it.” “The challenge for the innovators . . . is to be an evangelist among your colleagues.” -Alan Garber, HILT Symposium, Feb. 3, 2012
“How do we foster a true culture of teaching and learning? We have obstacles: to be a kindergarten teacher, you have to be certified. To be a lawyer, a doctor, you have to be certified. But to teach the next generation of intellectual leaders, all you need is a PhD – you’re expected to know…
“We also need to be more creative in how we fund our initiatives. Can we build in benefits to our partners so that they’re willing to shoulder the cost of our innovations?” – Youngme Moon, HILT Symposium, Feb. 3, 2012
“Our capacity to reach others, to grow, is inhibited by the fact that our unit price keeps growing as well. This is an issue . . . we all have to worry about. How can we do better in ways that extend our influence but don’t simultaneous price us out of the market?” – Larry…
“We need to be at least as attentive to imagining how we can enhance education without also building in more fixed costs.” – Larry Bacow, HILT Symposium, Feb. 3, 2012
“What’s the purpose of this institution? I would say it’s to conceive and promote teaching and learning as a public good, not as a private good. Everything we do can be informed by that question. When we look at for-profit universities that are using for-profit technologies to create new industries, it may not only be…
“We are teaching the teachers. The better we get at that, the more of an impact we can have.” -Alan Garber, HILT Symposium, Feb. 3, 2012
“We all teach for free, but we get paid to grade.” – Larry Bacow, HILT Symposium, Feb. 3, 2012
Nathan Stein, a graduate student and this year’s Departmental Teaching Fellow in the Statistics Department, wrote in to share an insight he had while listening to Steven Pinker’s talk at the recent HILT Symposium: [Pinker] said that the challenge of writing was converting a network of ideas into a linear string of words. He also…
