Teaching Resources

 

A Focus on Teaching and Learning

Dan Levy serves as a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Faculty Chair of Harvard Kennedy School's SLATE (Strengthening Learning and Teaching Excellence) Initiative. He teaches courses in quantitative methods, policy analysis, and program evaluation. He is passionate about effective teaching and learning, and enjoys sharing his experience and enthusiasm with others.

Prof. Levy has become increasingly interested in digital learning as a way to complement and strengthen residential education. He has worked with his teaching staff to develop interactive online units (work highlighted here and demos available here) that students engage with before class in order to shape what happens in the classroom. He also serves as a co-principal investigator of BCURE, a project aimed at building the capacity of policymakers to use research evidence. In this project, he led the team in charge of training, which involved designing and deploying six interactive online units as part of a blended learning experience for senior policymakers in India and Pakistan (more info available here). Prof. Levy also previously served as the Faculty Co-Chair of the HarvardX Research Committee, a university-wide committee focused on promoting research about online learning.

Prof. Levy has won several teaching awards, including the university-wide David Pickard Award for Teaching and Mentoring (awarded by the Harvard Statistics Department to a faculty member who has made important contributions to the teaching of statistics) and the Manuel C. Carballo Award for Excellence in Teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School.

He recently delivered a “master class” at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The class, available here, was part of a series launched to celebrate and publicize excellent teaching at Harvard. An interview with him on making learning memorable is available here.

Below is a series of presentations and workshops that Prof. Levy has previously conducted at various places.

 

Presentations and Workshops about Teaching and Learning

Topic

Target Participants

Description

Format

Duration

1 - Making Learning Memorable

(Master Class)

 

Faculty members, students, and administrators interested in effective teaching and learning

During this session, Prof. Levy teaches a sample class and then debriefs with the participants. The teaching demo is interactive and involves the use of various teaching techniques including identifying misconceptions, small group work and polling. The reflective discussion is an opportunity to examine which components were useful, followed by a broader conversation about effective teaching.

Teaching Demo + Debrief

90 minutes

2 - Digital Learning as a Catalyst for Better Teaching

Faculty members, students, and administrators interested in digital learning

This presentation is aimed at informing universities about the use of digital learning and how it can improve teaching quality. Prof. Levy reflects on how digital learning is reshaping higher education, and identifies the opportunities and challenges facing university administrators, faculty members, and students.

Presentation + Q&A

60 minutes

3 - Assessing Your Teaching

Faculty members

This workshop is aimed at helping faculty members identify ways to assess their own teaching. In this interactive workshop, Prof. Levy introduces assessment techniques he has used in his own teaching, and leads a discussion in which participants reflect on their current assessment activities and how these could be improved.

Workshop [Interactive Presentation and Discussion]

120 minutes

4 - Blended Learning

Faculty members

The terms “flipped classroom” and “blended learning” have become very popular in recent years. Unfortunately, these terms are often misunderstood and lead instructors to try teaching approaches that seldom lead to learning. In this workshop, Prof. Levy shares some of his experiences with blended learning and helps guide faculty members through the process of using blended learning in their own classrooms.

Workshop [Interactive Presentation and Discussion]

90 minutes

5 - Innovations in Teaching and Learning

Faculty members

In this workshop, Prof. Levy shares some of the innovations he has tried in his own teaching and leads a discussion in which participants share their innovations. The goal is for every participant to leave the workshop with at least one innovation technique s/he can try the next time s/he teaches a course.

Workshop [Interactive Presentation and Discussion]

90 minutes