The Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL) celebrated its tenth year in 2023–24. Over the last decade, we have grown in both scale and impact, leading the creation of online courses from across Harvard, steering the University through the challenges of the pandemic-era shift to remote learning, and surfacing and sharing pedagogical best practices in residential teaching. Leading the work of the Future of Teaching & Learning Task Force in 2022, we developed a roadmap to reimagine the classroom, enrich content, and expand our community. In the last year and a half, VPAL has begun to fulfill many of the promises of the FTL Report.
Our collective efforts (in partnership with HUIT and HBS) led to the successful build and launch of a new Learning Experience Platform (LXP) that will serve the whole Harvard community and provide transformative opportunities for key institutional partners. Pilot programs for the Harvard Law School and Faculty of Arts & Sciences have showcased our unique pedagogical approach of narrative inductive learning, allowing for rigorous course content, meaningful learner engagement, and valuable assessment.
VPAL has also engaged with faculty and leaders across the University in addressing some of the greatest challenges and opportunities facing our community recently. We led a President-appointed faculty group in early foundational work on Enabling Difficult Conversations that led to a University-wide convening and recommendations on how to champion free expression and open dialogue, laying the foundation for this year’s University-wide task forces on open inquiry. We facilitated the GenAI Teaching and Learning Group, which led to the creation of over 30 faculty videos on the myriad ways Harvard faculty use generative AI tools to support and enhance teaching, learning, and research. VPAL’s Harvard Initiative for Teaching and Learning (HILT) — launched in 2011 through a generous gift from Gustave and Rita Hauser — featured GenAI in its annual conference and engaged a wide range of participants. We continue to advise Schools and leadership on their efforts to leverage technologies more fully while developing and deploying their teaching programs.
Through coordinated planning this year, we have identified key areas
of strategic growth and launched prototypes for novel short-form learning experiences for individuals and business partners and negotiated exciting new partnerships with institutions around the world to offer our courses in translation. Our colleagues in LabXchange won the Global EdTech Award in the QS Reimagine Education Awards, continuing to push forward interactive and collaborative tools in online science education.
As we look forward to the continued rollout of the LXP this fall and continued growth of our course offerings in a multitude of formats, VPAL holds at its core our mission to shape the future of education and connect a global community of learners. I’m excited for you to learn more about all the incredible work being done by our VPAL team in service of this mission.
Bharat N. Anand Vice Provost for Advances in Learning
Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration
Harvard’s Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning (VPAL) seeks to shape the future of education by discovering new ways to build the competence, curiosity, and confidence of learners on our campuses and around the world.
We create engaging and scalable learning experiences, cultivate inspiring ideas, and connect a global community of learners while developing tools, technologies, platforms, and policies to reduce friction throughout the learning lifecycle.
The Learning Experience Platform (LXP) is Harvard’s novel solution to delivering highly engaging asynchronous and blended learning at scale.
The LXP is designed for both desktop and mobile use, from a learner’s landing page as a point of connection to an interactive mini-case.
Outsmarting Implicit Bias Faculty of Arts & Sciences
The LXP represents one of Harvard’s most important strategic investments in learning technology in recent years. It was catalyzed by the Future of Teaching and Learning Task Force report, which recommended building a unified University-wide platform for the delivery
of online, residential, and blended programs. Initially, it will serve Harvard’s stakeholders and audiences, as well as a global audience of educators and learners. We are also partnering with institutions to bring this learning infrastructure to serve those in underserved communities.
There are three vectors that represent the goals of the new Harvard LXP to deliver a transformative teaching and learning experience across the University and around the globe:
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Integrating into the residential degree and professional learning classroom environment the experiences that were previously designed exclusively for online delivery.
Enabling seamless integration between synchronous and asynchronous learning, allowing for greater flexibility in course delivery and engagement.
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Offering modular, flexible learning experiences in addition to traditional longform courses, redefining how different audiences learn.
“Professors come up with wonderfully outrageous ideas about what they would like their course to be, but they haven’t got the slightest idea of how to make that happen! I’m sure I was that professor. It has been my privilege to work with VPAL on Outsmarting Implicit Bias. I could not have imagined the work that went into it and the excellent final version that emerged.”
— Prof. Mahzarin Banaji
The LXP successfully ran its first learner-facing program — Zero-L, a Harvard Law School pre-matriculation program for law school students — in June 2023 and 2024, supporting the learning of thousands of students on behalf of over a dozen participating law schools across the country.
“The first original LXP course Outsmarting Implicit Bias by Mahzarin Banaji, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics (FAS) had a successful B2C beta launch in April
2024 and B2B beta launch in June, with a public launch planned for September. This engaging new short-form course produced by VPAL will open the doors to a multitude of innovative pedagogical experiences and partnerships.
The design, build, and launch of the Harvard LXP has required the efforts of all teams across VPAL — envisioning a robust product roadmap that will continue to expand the possibilities of the platform into areas such as virtual campus and licensing, developing
VPAL
documentation and processes for course development and launch, upgrading and streamlining our marketing and participant registration systems, setting up a customer service desk, and engaging with internal and external partners to support and sustain the growth of the LXP.
Above: OIB, on either a desktop or mobile device, offers engaging, interactive teaching elements, from video to polls to shared reflections.
VPAL has partnered with a range of Harvard Schools to develop courses and programs for the new platform, from a College orientation program to a climate change series with HKS.
Our inaugural LXP partners — HBS and HUIT — have been invested from the start in developing new technologies and support systems with an eye towards transitioning the robust catalog of HBSO courses to the LXP.
VPAL has been a key partner in the University’s coordinated approach to new Generative AI technologies and the related policies, principles, and support that faculty, students, and staff are seeking.
harvard.edu/ai/category/faculty-voices/
Faculty share their expertise in a library of videos on the Generative AI @ Harvard website.
GEN AI TEACHING & LEARNING GROUP
The Vice Provost chairs the GenAI Teaching and Learning Group, which seeks to share resources, identify emerging best practices, and craft effective strategies for common challenges. It provides direct and timely communication between those responsible for implementation across Harvard Schools, as well as communication with University leadership and other working groups.
The Group contributed content to the University-wide Generative AI @ Harvard website, including developing a robust and engaging library of faculty voices. The video collection explores the myriad ways Harvard faculty have begun to use generative AI tools to support and enhance teaching, learning, and research.
HILT & GenAI
The Harvard Initiative for Learning & Teaching (HILT) stewards Universitywide collaborations that surface teaching and learning innovations through the combined efforts of individual students, faculty, and staff, and the coordination of programs, centers, departments, and Schools.
HILT has been an important thoughtpartner and coordinator of work related to Generative AI, including the awarding of funds to two GenAI Teaching & Learning-focused projects:
“AI Writing Companion for Foreign Language Learning,” led by Nicole Mills (FAS)
“Exploring How Generative AI Can Support Student-Directed Projects: A Pedagogical Toolkit,” led by Karen Brennan and Paulina Haduong (HGSE)
HILT CONFERENCE
VPAL’s annual HILT Conference, held in September 2023, focused on the theme “Teaching in the Age of AI: Nurturing Connections and Empowering Learners.” Over 500 faculty, staff, and students registered for the event. Over 85% of attendees were engaged in Universitylevel dialogue and benefited from useful, actionable examples in different sessions.
Various demonstrations helped attendees understand the potential of GenAI in a new light. The demonstrations from Mitchell B. Weiss, Richard L. Menschel Professor of Management Practice (HBS), were enlightening and the interdisciplinary plenary conversations provided fascinating reflections on AI’s implications for policy in the public sphere. Attendees also appreciated the comprehensive and incisive discussion on what generative AI can and cannot do. Overall, the sessions sparked interest and enthusiasm among the participants to explore and use AI in their own settings.
HILT has supported VPAL’s focus on GenAI in a multitude of ways beyond the conference throughout the academic year. A number of Signature Events, Colleague Conversations, and issues of Into Practice centered GenAI as their theme.
TUTORBOT SEMINAR
The HILT TutorBot Seminar held in December 2023 showcased the development, implementation, and future of AI-based educational tools, specifically tutor bots. A series of short presentations were held where faculty and staff members from various schools demonstrated the many interfaces they are building for and testing in the classroom. The Seminar led to the creation of the VPAL System Prompt Library, a dynamic, user-centered digital repository designed for educators. Its primary purpose is to provide a comprehensive collection of customizable prompts for Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs), tailored specifically for educational use.
GEN AI SHOW & TELL
HILT was a partner for the FAS Generative AI Faculty Show & Tell in December 2023, in which four FAS faculty shared with colleagues how they are using the latest generative artificial intelligence technology in the classroom, aiming to exchange ideas and uncover practical ways to integrate AI into academic work.
VPAL has taken a leading role in working with senior University leaders to define, discuss, and convene community members around issues connected to freedom of expression and academic freedom.
In August 2022, anticipating the increased urgency of ensuring clarity and alignment across our campus around principles of freedom of expression and academic freedom, then-President Larry Bacow and then-Provost Alan Garber assembled a four-member Faculty Group on Enabling Difficult Conversations (EDC): Vice Provost Bharat Anand (VPAL and HBS), Dean Rakesh Khurana (Harvard College and HBS), Professor Erica Chenoweth (HKS), and Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen (HLS).
The group spoke with faculty and staff at the various Harvard Schools, sought information about Schools’ efforts on these fronts, conversed with peer institutions that face similar challenges, led discussions with Harvard’s Governing Boards, and organized the Harvard-wide Dialogue on Strengthening Academic Freedom, Fostering Intellectual Vitality, and Enabling Difficult Conversations as first steps toward facilitating campus-wide conversations on these issues.
In January 2024, VPAL in its coordinating role worked with eight other Boston-area universities to facilitate the Dialogue & Action Panel Series, a sequence of four seminars featuring faculty experts from across the universities.
VPAL continues to grow our content and community across the globe.
From January 2023 – June 2024, we added 10 new courses, built our capacity to offer over 300 course waves, and grew our enrollments by over 7 million, building on the legacy of edX and Harvard Online that have seen a cumulative 29.6 million learners engage with our online offerings, earning over 500K certificates along the way. This global community of learners is finding us on social media, resulting in 60K followers of the Harvard Online Instagram channel. With this following and our growth in courses and enrollment, we continue to drive forward advances in learning and engagement.
Film Shoots
New Courses Launched
Course Waves
Videos Produced
Enrollments
Cumulative Learners
33.3M+ Cumulative Enrollments
29.6M+
Cumulative Certificates Earned
500K+
175 Countries Represented
Harvard Online Instagram Followers
60K+
150+ Faculty Partnerships
Illustration by Rose Wong
Producing engaging online courses for diverse audiences — and expanding our reach
New VPAL Courses
VPAL launched 10 new courses between January 2023 and June 2024:
• Food Systems Live!: Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies
• Strategy Execution for Public Leadership
• Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care
• Building Personal Resilience: Managing Anxiety and Mental Health
• Innovations in Teamwork for Health Care
• Ciencia de Datos: Fundamentos de R
• Fundamentals of Neuroscience Final Exam
• Machine Learning and AI with Python
• CS50’s Introduction to Cybersecurity
• CS50’s Introduction to Databases with SQL
In addition, we launched the Neuroscience MicroBachelors program on edX. We now have over 140 courses running yearly on edX. While the edX parent company 2U announced financial restructuring in summer 2024, VPAL looks forward to continuing this important work through the edX platform.
OIB Beta
In April 2024 the Outsmarting Implicit Bias course beta, taught by Professor Mahzarin Banaji (FAS), launched on the LXP. The first new course on this new platform, this sixhour learning experience teaches the science of implicit bias and strategies to counter the impact of bias in the workplace.
Highlights
50 courses in translation
Piloted a translation effort on edX, resulting in over 50 courses now being offered with video transcripts in 11 languages, with more to come.
COURSE HIGHLIGHTS:
• Appealing to business-to-consumer as well as business-to-business audiences.
• The course will launch to the general public in September 2024.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the B2C beta was 75, the highest ever for a beta run of a course.
35 % increase
Saw a 35% increase in total learners for premium courses from the previous year.
85 out of 100
Innovations in Teamwork for Health Care, which launched in Sept 2023, set a new benchmark for learner satisfaction with our online courses, as measured by NPS (Net Promoter Score), with a score of 85 out of 100.
How VPAL teams create state-of-the-art online learning experiences
1. The Instructional Design team works with faculty to envision and write a course, from ideation to completion.
2. The Media team films faculty and protagonist interviews, designs course aesthetics, animates course content, and produces all digital assets used in courses and beyond.
3. The Technology teams design and sustain platforms and tools that support the running of courses online, whether through the edX, HBSO, or LXP platforms.
4. The Marketing & Product Management team identifies key audiences for our diverse course offerings, designing marketing campaigns, building relationships with corporate partners, and promoting faculty and student engagement through the Harvard Online blog and webinars.
5. The Program Services team launches and supports course runs, managing the participant experience through enrollment and the awarding of certificates.
Above: An on-site shoot in Mumbai for the upcoming course Digital Strategy; Prof. Luana Marques films her course Building Personal Resilience in the VPAL Studio.
VPAL plays an important role in extending the reach and access of Harvard’s excellence through key partnerships and agreements with institutions and businesses around the world.
UNCF Partnership
For the past year, Harvard, Axim Collaborative, and the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) have been collaborating to support the development of HBCU Virtual, or HBCUv, a new platform to expand digital learning and equitable access to education for historically Black colleges and universities. The parallel development of HBCUv by UNCF and the LXP by Harvard has provided unique opportunities for the sharing of experience and expertise that enhance the work of both institutions and better enable us to meet the needs of our learner populations and partner audiences.
CS50 for Teachers in Indonesia
CS50 for Teachers in Indonesia is a customized course for teachers in Indonesia to learn to teach CS50, Harvard’s blockbuster course on programming created by David Malan, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science (SEAS). The program contains a blend of synchronous and asynchronous instruction; the six-month course had 272 learners from schools throughout Indonesia from the island of Java and Aceh to as far away as Papua. An in-person two-day workshop was held at Jakarta Intercultural School to train the teachers on how to teach CS50 in their classrooms.
UniRef
Hundreds of Syrian refugees living in Jordan have enrolled in Harvard’s Professional Certificate in Computer Science for Web Programming offered through edX, made possible through a partnership with UniRef (University for Refugees). The apolitical, Swissrecognized charity NGO, founded in 2013 by Yvelyne and Bryan Wood, strives to empower the refugee community by creating intensive and short-term professional training programs, equipping refugees with valuable career skills but also enabling them to shape their own futures. Harvard and UniRef hope to expand this program into other regions soon.
IberoTech Licensing Agreement
VPAL signed a content licensing agreement with the IberoAmerican Technology Foundation (IberoTech), a nonprofit that champions technological innovation across borders and facilitates collaboration between top U.S. universities and Ibero-American institutions, with a focus on bridging the technology skills gap and fostering economic growth.
The agreement will introduce Harvard’s technology courses, starting with a focus on data science, to university students throughout the Ibero-American region.
As early partner organizations of IberoTech, Santander Universidades will provide scholarships in 2024 for university students in Mexico, focusing on enhancing opportunities for employment; Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) has launched a training program in Data Science for women in technology; and Universidad de Guadalajara will roll out technology training programs in collaboration with IberoTech and Santander Universidades.
B2B Subscription Program
HarvardX included its catalog in edX’s newly launched B2B subscription program, which allows companies to subscribe to edX content at a reduced rate. In our first year of this program, enrollments are growing rapidly with over 15,000 enrollments in the last quarter.
Expansion of Strategic Partnerships
We are expanding our strategic partnerships to bring our courses to corporations, nonprofits, educational institutions, and government agencies. In recent months we have partnered with Seattle Children’s Hospital, Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Government of Qatar, and others to offer our courses to their employees, and look forward to growing our outreach in this area.
Vice Provost Bharat Anand speaks with members of IberoTech.
Sitting at the center of the University, VPAL is strongly positioned to connect people and initiatives across our many Schools and to bridge to the world beyond Harvard.
Signature Events
VPAL hosted 25 cross-University live events featuring 43 faculty from across the Harvard Schools for almost 4K attendees on a diverse range of topics, including AI, Homelessness, Oral Health, the Legacy of Slavery, Capitalism, and more. This included six events in partnership with the Salata Institute in the series Harvard Speaks on Climate Change.
HIGHLIGHT:
First Harvard School of Dental Medicine collaboration in the fall of 2023 with Dr. Catherine Hayes and Dr. Hawazin Elani.
Harvard Innovation Labs
HILT co-hosted three seminars with the Harvard Innovation Labs to convene 45 faculty and staff from across the University who use projectbased, learning-by-doing pedagogy in entrepreneurship, innovation, and design courses for undergraduate and graduate students, sparking an exchange of best practices for designing and delivering such courses.
“The HILT Colleague Conversations are so important to sharing learning and teaching strategies/dilemmas with colleagues from across the University.”
— Pamela
Mason (HGSE), Spring 2024
Colleague Conversations
HILT hosted 17 Colleague Conversations for over 200 faculty and staff member participants, covering a wide range of topics related to teaching at Harvard, including GenAI, Education Innovation, Climate Education, Difficult Conversations, Creativity in the Classroom, Blended Learning, DEI, Student Agency, and Student Community.
HOSTS:
Bharat Anand (VPAL/HBS)
Tamara Brenner (FAS)
Sherri Ann Charleston (FAS)
Kerry Foley (FAS)
Brendan Kelly (FAS)
Manja Klemencic (FAS)
Lee LaFleur (Library)
Tim McCarthy (HGSE/HKS)
Nicole Mills (FAS)
Adrienne Phelps-Coco (FAS)
Allison Pingree (HGSE)
Annie Rota (HUIT)
Melissa Tarr (VPAL)
Dustin Tingley (VPAL/FAS)
Nick Wilson (VPAL)
Into Practice
HILT published 19 new issues of the Into Practice e-newsletter, highlighting pedagogical innovation for over 20K subscribers.
ISSUES:
Ewa Lajer-Burcharth (FAS) - Hands-on learning through objects
Glenn Cohen (HLS) - Zero-L: Reimagining pre-orientation to prepare students for Day One success
Shai Dromi (FAS) - Engaging with the campus community
Sharad Goel (HKS) - Inclusive classrooms: How can we put our ethos into practice?
Sheila Heen (HLS) - Learning to negotiate by making mistakes
Andrew Ho (HGSE) - Assessment as a learning tool
Jim Honan (HGSE) - Adapting residential courses for online cohorts
Brendan Kelly (FAS) - Empowering students to practice essential learning strategies
Rose Molina (HMS) - Professionoriented language training
Rosalea Monacella (GSD) - Fostering collaboration skills in the classroom
Tsedal Neeley (HBS) - Engaging students emotionally through online simulations
Rebecca Nesson (SEAS) and Charles Nesson (HLS) - Leveraging digital spaces to enhance student engagement
Sang Park (HSDM) - Incorporating students’ voices into curriculum redesign efforts
Stephanie Pierce & Mansi Srivastava (FAS) - Improving your pedagogy and enhancing student learning through team teaching
Allison Pingree (HGSE) - The importance of gathering and incorporating mid-semester student feedback
Gavin Porter (HMS) - Using social annotation tools to unlock collective wisdom
Shoba Ramanadhan (HSPH)Preparing students to meaningfully engage with and learn from community experts
Vijay Janapa Reddi (SEAS)Reimagining STEM learning objectives in response to Generative AI
Musa Syeed (FAS) - Supporting risktaking in the classroom
Teaching and Learning Communities
More than 55 academic professional staff from all Schools, libraries, and museums convene in the Teaching and Learning Consortium (TLC), sharing best practices and challenges in teaching and learning. This year, they took part in hands-on activities to engage with the Harvard AI Sandbox, crowdsourced resources and policies for GenAI, discussed hybrid courses, and shared news on activities, working groups, and student pulse surveys conducted across campus.
HILT’s four Affinity Groups (Learning Data & Analytics, Learning Design, Learning Spaces, and ResearchInformed Teaching & Learning) held 13 events for their 720 members, covering topics including effective learning strategies, nuances of calculating time on task, custom course bots, and learning about AI. They also held tours of learning spaces across campus like the SEC, HBS, Bok Learning Lab, and DCE’s Studio. A new GenAI Teaching & Learning Affinity Group was launched in summer 2024.
Members of the Teaching and Learning Consortium tour the Brattle Square Studio
VPAL is home to Harvard Online, a community and catalog of courses built on global expertise and research. Curated series of courses combine faculty and disciplines from across the University to extend learning opportunities for students around the world.
Harvard Online learners are connected not just by their shared pedagogical experiences, but by their social community, finding new ways to engage with each other, including through the Harvard Online Instagram account, which was launched in late December 2022 and now has over 60K followers.
Over 4,500 people attended five Harvard Online webinars with faculty experts on pressing questions of the day, including “What factors contribute to the rising costs of health care in the United States?” and “Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected rising rates of anxiety globally?”
“Through Harvard Online, I’m part of an international community of selfstarters, developing and learning in a world-class teaching environment. The fact that it’s open to all is absolutely brilliant. I’ve benefited enormously in both knowledge and confidence. It’s great to think there are others earning the same satisfaction and surprising themselves in the same way!”
— Harvard Online learner Amanda from the United Kingdom
“The VPAL team has covered incredible ground this year: from the development of the LXP to the launch of our first short-form course; from a focus on GenAI supported by events and media to the centering of our marketing and partnership strategies; from a dedication to the traditions of our pedagogical approach to our commitment to innovation and excellence. We are energized and aligned as we move into the next year with an eye on expanding our reach to bring Harvard’s expertise to the world.”
— Bharat Anand, Vice Provost for Advances in Learning
PHOTO CREDITS :
Photos of HILT Conference (throughout), Susan Young; OIB illustration (front cover + p.16), Marc Martin; Students sitting in Harvard Yard (cover), Grace DuVal/Harvard University; Steps of Widener Library (p. 13), Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University; Key Figures illustration (pp.14-15), Rose Wong; Filming for Digital Strategy and Building Personal Resilience (p. 17), Mary Godfrey/VPAL; David Malan (p. 18), Leroy Zhang/CS50; UniRef conference (p. 18), UniRef; iLAB (p. 20), Kevin Belli/VPAL; Learning Spaces Tour (p.21), Deb Sears/Harvard University; Veritas shield (p. 23), Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University; Columns of Littauer Center (p. 23), Kris Snibbe/Harvard University; John Harvard statue in the snow (p. 23), Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University; Student using tablet in class (back cover), Kris Snibbe/Harvard University; Holworthy Hall (back cover), Jon Chase/Harvard University
