Over 60 faculty from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health recently joined Incubator Faculty Director Sue J. Goldie for an interactive workshop about pivoting traditional, in-person courses to the virtual environment. Speaking candidly from her personal experience shifting her flagship Harvard College course, World Health: Challenges and Opportunities, online, Professor Goldie outlined core strategies that fellow faculty could leverage to pivot their instructional design.
These strategies, or “course blueprint,” offer an opportunity to pause and carefully reflect on course design. Weaving in visual examples from her course, Goldie described the flexible, yet systematic, way faculty could revisit course objectives and pacing, deconstruct lessons and concepts, select an overall “course architecture,” and identify technologies and tools that support those pedagogical choices.
Throughout the workshop, Goldie emphasized the critical importance of being open and transparent with students in the instructional design process, as well as creating personal touchpoints for students to remain connected to faculty and course staff.
The workshop exemplifies Goldie’s commitment to novel, interdisciplinary education—a cornerstone of the tools, resources, and approaches developed at the Incubator. In the spring, Goldie was recipient of the Roger L. Nichols Award for Excellence in Teaching, a recognition of her extraordinary contributions to innovative teaching and learning at the Harvard Chan School.
Want to learn more about pivoting a course to a multimodal online environment? Explore a live prototype of how Professor Goldie made this teaching transition.