Learning by Doing: Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology

Dates

July 2000 — June 2003

Principal Investigator

Professor Martha Gray (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

Goal

Establish a pedagogical framework aimed at boosting student comprehension of course material, and develop the technological infrastructure to implement it. Exploring teaching models, leveraging what works, and fusing pedagogy with technology.

Overview

In collaboration with faculty in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and utilizing materials and expertise from the VaNTH Bioengineering Education Technologies project, this project identified when the use of constructive activities is appropriate and formulated general principles for developing technology-enabled pedagogical tools to enhance the educational experience.

First, a collection of workshops and seminars were scheduled to allow interested instructors, staff, and students to learn about recent developments in learning sciences and the implications for effective teaching. Second, a novel observation system was employed to assess student-teacher interactions in classes where instructors would make use of constructive activities. Finally, these observations were used as a starting point to distill general principles for defining a pedagogical framework to develop technology-enhanced learning tools.

To maximize the impact of this work, it was imperative to lower the threshold of effort required to develop effective technology-enhanced instructional materials. After identifying general principles as described above, they were used to inform the design of a common technological infrastructure based on successful pedagogic approaches. This work aimed to permit more rapid and efficient development of technology-enhanced educational activities in the future.

"I really liked the way this laboratory was organized. Designing a detector was not very hard after having solved the previous exercises that guided us through this task, which would have been otherwise hard to accomplish." — Student in HST 582J

Project Output

Links

HST Class Site

VaNTH Bioengineering Educational Technologies