B. Hybrid Approaches

who embraced this approach reported “an increase in learning mastery, a reduction in student stress, and an increase in confidence”18 compared with outcomes for the same course before the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, experiences varied. For some, remote teaching was a hardship with no silver lining. Some were reluctant to generalize about the efficacy of online teaching on the basis of an experience that was inextricably bound up in the context of the pandemic. And others changed their views completely. “Online engagement can be higher than in the physical classroom,” one faculty member said. “It’s hard to hide, and you have to be on the edge of your seat and involved.” Another commented, “In-person teaching is wonderful, but after teaching in the remote situation, it seems there are valid, efficient, and purposeful processes we should hold onto.” Before the pandemic, many Harvard faculty viewed online teaching as an unfamiliar modality, probably inferior to in-person teaching and something they would never need to adopt. Yet within months all became conversant with remote teaching technologies and tools. That has profound implications for the future. Organizational change typically encounters many barriers, the most common being resistance stemming from inertial routines and fear of the unknown. Now that 100% of our faculty are now familiar with digital teaching, we are poised to have an informed, authentic conversation about future possibilities that might otherwise have taken years or decades.

B. Hybrid Approaches

Although most of Harvard’s residential programs switched to 100% remote teaching for AY2020–2021, some adopted hybrid models: synchronous teaching to a single class of students, some of whom were in the physical classroom and others of whom were at home on their laptops.19 HBS and HKS created hybrid classrooms by adding large screens, new technology infrastructure, and ventilation upgrades to existing rooms. Harvard College used the Division of Continuing Education’s (DCE) HELIX technology20 for some courses in established DCE rooms and in Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) rooms with portable setups. (See Appendix C: Hybrid Classrooms for visuals.) • The HBS and HKS hybrid classrooms contained multiple monitors, each showing up to 25 remote students. In-room students used their laptops to see and be seen. Although all students were on an equal footing, HKS found that participation was often more limited than in allremote or all-residential classes. For instance, its hybrid classrooms had to operate multiple

Zoom rooms: one for remote students, one for the in-person classroom, and one for the faculty.

That required disabling several Zoom features, including chat, hand-raising, polling, and randomized breakout rooms.

• FAS designated 14 spring 2021 courses (mostly labs, studio art, performance, and other subjects in which online teaching is particularly challenging) for in-person learning, attended by roughly 200 undergraduates already on campus. The most flexible of those arrangements

18 Conversation with Eric Mazur (May 2021) about his experience teaching Applied Physics 50. 19 “Hybrid,” like “blended,” means different things to different people. For a more-extensive discussion of terminological and taxonomical inconsistencies, see McMurtrie 2021. 20 DCE was one of the first Harvard divisions to adopt a hybrid model, having identified remote learning as a strategic priority in the late 1990s. By 2007, it was offering its first blended programs via the HELIX classroom. By the end of 2019, DCE and other schools within Harvard were serving more than 50,000 learners in online course formats, with significant learner and faculty satisfaction. Degree programs have also been offered in online and hybrid formats, such as the HSCPH MPH EPI degree, which has operated in a low-residency format since its launch in 2015.