Active Learning at Harvard Kennedy School

Video is downloadable from:

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/degrees/teaching-courses/teaching/slate#ContentTop
Our job at the Kennedy School is to prepare a
new generation of public leaders to fix a world
in trouble.
The problems that we face are more complex,
more intricate, more involved, more global so
we have to think about different ways of teaching and learning.
Weve known for a long time that people
dont learn best when theyre being talked to.
You get a lecture and you get a lot of information thrown at you at once but its not necessarily inculcated in your daily understanding
of how to address a policy problem.
We now realize that there are much more
effective ways of teaching and learning. One of
the things were doing is experimenting with
the physical lay-out of the classroom.
When I first walked in to the classroom, I
think I was a little bit confused. We werent
passive students listening to someone in front
of the class. We were engaging with each other
because were face to face.
There was a real flattening of the hierarchy
where instead of being as they put the sage on
the stage, I was kind of an orchestrator of student learning rather than a deliverer of knowledge.
Students are creating the class themselves.
They are part of fueling the material thats
coming out of it.
Class time is a scarcest time of all.
So the professor can either spend a lot of
time in class just talking to the students or
he can spend more time in class discussing
with the students and being more interactive.
Weve been experimenting with the flipped
classroom where we deliver material outside
the class and before the class.
What weve done is create on-line models,
letting the students learn about the concepts at
their own pace. And when they come to class,
they come with that knowledge ready to work
on hard problems.
As evidence accumulates about what works,
it changes the whole schools conception of a
good teaching. Somebody experiments with

simulations whether kind of traditional role

playing simulations or more novel game-based
simulations where people have to deal with a
state of the world generated by a roll of the dice
and nobody knows whats gonna happen.
While were dealing with simulations, were
case studies or video conference, were engaged
in real world problem-solving but were still in
a classroom. We have to send our students out
into the world to practise.
When you get on the ground, you really get
to see these concepts come alive. In the world
everything is messy. Its real people, with real
problems needing real solutions.
Weve had so many moments where things
didnt go as planned and they think if everything goes as planned its because youre not
adapting, youre not iterating, youre not
taking signals from the place that you are in.
There is no one best way to engage in active
learning. We dont know the right answer yet.
We have so many ideas and we need to continue experimenting, evaluating what were
doing so that we can scale off future innovations.
Its really great to come to a place where
there are people so concerned with the learning
of the students.
The goal is not just to get students to learn
in the classroom but rather to have that learning be so deep, so in their bones, that when
they get out of the Kennedy School they
instinctively use their learning to deal with
complex problems in the real world.
The most important way in which we have
an impact on world is by improving what our
students can do. Teaching, teaching right, is
action in the most powerful sort.
Its given me the most confidence that I can
succeed at the business of government.
(Transcription by Suwardjono)
see also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA5R41F7d9Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_WBkngxT4E