Connecting Students, Faculty, and Innovative Web Pedagogy: The Presidential Instructional Technology Fellows (PITF) Program at Harvard University

1. Connecting Students, Faculty,
and Innovative Web Pedagogy
The Presidential Instructional Technology Fellows (PITF)
Program at Harvard University
Annie Rota Manager of Instructional Design & Development
Kevin Guiney Instructional Computing Specialist
Daniel Jamous Senior Specialist for Instructional Computing in
the Sciences & Social Sciences
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services
Introductions
Outline
- About the PITF program
! - Mission
! - History
! - Running the program
! - Lessons learned
- Project demonstrations

2. Who are we?
Harvard Harvard
Faculty of Graduate School of
Medicine School of Public
Education Health
Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Radcliffe
John F.
Harvard • Harvard College
Kennedy Institute for
Business
• Graduate School of Arts and
School of Advanced
School
• Sciences
Government Study
• School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences
• Division of Continuing Education
Graduate Harvard
Harvard
School of Divinity
Law School
Design School
Harvard University
Not drawn to scale
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Context: What does ICG do?
- support course platform
- consult & develop digital teaching materials
How do we fit into the University?
- serve the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, where all undergraduate instruction takes place
- click shows # of courses, students, faculty
If it’s a small audience:
! And who are you? Do you have programs where students work with faculty on digital teaching materials?
! - How many of you are:
! ! - librarians?
! ! - instructional technologists?
! ! -flash developers?

3. Who are we?
Harvard Harvard
Faculty of Graduate School of
Medicine School of Public
Education Health
Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Radcliffe
John F.
Harvard • 1,500 undergraduate courses per term
Kennedy Institute for
Business
• 1,100 “active” course websites
School of Advanced
School
• 1,100 faculty
Government Study
• 6,600 undergraduates
• 3,700 graduate students
• 41 undergraduate concentrations
Graduate Harvard
Harvard
School of Divinity
Law School
Design School
Harvard University
Not drawn to scale
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Context: What does ICG do?
- support course platform
- consult & develop digital teaching materials
How do we fit into the University?
- serve the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, where all undergraduate instruction takes place
- click shows # of courses, students, faculty
If it’s a small audience:
! And who are you? Do you have programs where students work with faculty on digital teaching materials?
! - How many of you are:
! ! - librarians?
! ! - instructional technologists?
! ! -flash developers?

4. Glossary of Acronyms
PITF = Presidential Instructional Technology Fellow
ICG = Instructional Computing Group
FAS = Faculty of Arts & Sciences
TF = Teaching Fellow = Teaching Assistant
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Alphabet soup!

5. PITF Program: Mission
For faculty:
• Create digital teaching materials
• Support faculty using digital materials
For students:
• Collaborate with faculty
• Enhance professional development
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
• Enhanced Mission: extend support available to faculty for innovative use of digital teaching materials; AND provide students with unique
opportunities to collaborate with faculty in their teaching
• Students get:
• ! - opportunity to collaborate with faculty they wouldn’t otherwise get to work with
• quot; - professional development in learning technical skills and in conceptualizing teaching
• quot; - opportunity to develop different kinds of relationships with faculty with partners in libraries, museums, archives, & other schools

6. A brief history
Projects Fellows
60
45
30
15
Summer 2004* Summer 2005 Summer 2006 Summer 2007**
*approximate **As of 6/5/07
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Before: 2001-2: ICG Internship program; 1-2 projects/summer
PITF beginnings:
! April 2004: phone call from Provost’s oquot;ce; FAS has to launch PITF program for summer
! ICG dropped everything and focused on this program for the summer
! Developed the model for University-wide program
Continued growth:
! - more projects
! - more fellows

7. Running the program
• Academic Year: support & consulting
• Summer: project development
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Academic Year program
! - extend support & outreach
! - consulting using existing tools
! - drop-in support
Summer program
! - ICG sta# act as project managers
! - simple faculty project application process
! - ICG develops “contracts” with faculty outlining deliverables, timeframes, & commitments
Administration
! - student pay rates set to be competitive with grad student teaching rates
! - program diversity

8. Lessons learned
• Working with students
• Working with Faculty
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Working with students:
! - limit development commitments during academic year
! - full-time professional sta# (i.e. us) critical to conceptualizing projects that can be a) e#ective and b) completed
! - full-time sta# roles change:
! ! - conceptualization & planning
! ! - technical oversight & mentoring
! ! - project managers & spacklers
! - recruiting: Facebook, posters, poaching from our colleagues
Working with faculty:
! - plenty of management overhead to get projects completed
! - take full advantage of Presidential label on program
! - announcements from Deans get attention where emails from IT sta# do not

9. Continued challenges
• Balance
• Growth
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Balance:
! - desire for rich development (depth) vs. breadth of curriculum
! - continue to incorporate assessment into our process
Growing the program: what does it mean and how do we do it?
! - more projects?
! - more involved projects?
The story continues...
! - Initial funding 1 year, renewed for 2nd year
! - Renewed for another 3 years; we’re in year 2 of that 3 now

10. Harvard’s course platform
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
LAB-82 Screen shots:
- sites organized in pages
- pages contain multiple topic boxes
- topic boxes contain everything:
! - documents
! - sets of web pages
! - interactive/multimedia elements
! - tools like discussions, blogs, dropboxes

11. Harvard’s course platform
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
LAB-82 Screen shots:
- sites organized in pages
- pages contain multiple topic boxes
- topic boxes contain everything:
! - documents
! - sets of web pages
! - interactive/multimedia elements
! - tools like discussions, blogs, dropboxes

12. Harvard’s course platform
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
LAB-82 Screen shots:
- sites organized in pages
- pages contain multiple topic boxes
- topic boxes contain everything:
! - documents
! - sets of web pages
! - interactive/multimedia elements
! - tools like discussions, blogs, dropboxes

13. Harvard’s course platform
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
LAB-82 Screen shots:
- sites organized in pages
- pages contain multiple topic boxes
- topic boxes contain everything:
! - documents
! - sets of web pages
! - interactive/multimedia elements
! - tools like discussions, blogs, dropboxes

14. Project demonstrations
• PITF Project demos
Alternate
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Link goes to list hosted on ICG iSite
Alternate link goes to set of screen shots

15. Questions & discussion
http://icg.fas.harvard.edu/
rota@fas.harvard.edu
guiney@fas.harvard.edu
jamous@fas.harvard.edu
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
- Do you have programs where students work with faculty? How are they similar or di#erent
from the PITF program?
- Pros and cons of working with students
- Pros and cons of projects for faculty
(next slide begins series of screen shots in case of connectivity probs)

16. French Pronunciation
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University

17. Mechanical Systems
Simulations
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Click to show changed values

18. Mechanical Systems
Simulations
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
Click to show changed values

19. Japan Pop Trailer
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
If network connection is working, click image to link to streaming server.

20. Justice Blog
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University

21. Collaborative Research Tool
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University

22. Scroll Viewer
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University

23. Tokyo Time Machine
Concluding slide
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
1. Contemporary satellite image
2. 1954 map
3. 1632 map, with west at top
! (note orientation of river)

24. Tokyo Time Machine
Concluding slide
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
1. Contemporary satellite image
2. 1954 map
3. 1632 map, with west at top
! (note orientation of river)

25. Tokyo Time Machine
Concluding slide
Instructional Computing Group, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services, Harvard University
1. Contemporary satellite image
2. 1954 map
3. 1632 map, with west at top
! (note orientation of river)