How People Learn

Project Background 

How People Learn (HPL) is an ambitious project funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to create a personalized, foundational learning experience for incoming HGSE Ed.M. students.  The course will support students as they develop mastery of a set of competencies related to human development, learning, and the design of learning experiences. HPL is the first step toward realizing a new vision for Ed.M. education at HGSE. We also ultimately envision offering HPL to educators across the sector and licensing the course for use by other institutions, with the goal of influencing the field around what professional education experiences for educators look like. 

  • Faculty co-chairs: Matthew Miller, Lecturer on Education, Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching & Catherine Snow, Patricia Albjerg Graham, Professor of Education
  • Audience: 650 incoming Master’s in Education students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education 
  • Platform: Open EdX / Canvas
  • Duration: 5 2-week online modules, 1 blended module
  • Current project progress: Pilot stage (6 1-week modules; 230 students) 

Personalization in the Course Design

  • Learner Level
  • Program Level
  • System Level

Personalization by students’ professional interest: students choose a different level (Learner, Program, or System) through which to analyze a real world educational initiative.

Choice points: at the start of HPL, all students create a Learner Profile in which they identify their goals for their HGSE experience. Based on the information in this Learner Profile, the personalized recommendation engine recommends a case, or “Field Study” that matches students’ interests and goals. Students can choose which Field Study they would like to explore.

Just-in-time feedback: the course is designed to capture student learning at regular intervals, and facilitators provide regular feedback on assignments.

My Role on the Project 

  • I led the design of HPL Module 1: Developmental Trajectories and Constraints, and Module 5: Domains and their Interconnections. As the LD on the first module of the course, I also documented and tested the process of designing and developing an HPL module. 
  • I worked on the evaluation team to design and implement an evaluation plan for three pilots of the course. This evaluation allowed us to measure project success, inform project redesign and communicate key information to stakeholders. 
  • I developed a Style Guide that allows for collaboration on buildout of a course without a loss of quality or consistency and streamlines the quality assurance testing process by providing specific criteria to test against.
  • I worked with the Associate Director of Curriculum Design and Assessment to develop an assessment strategy for the course that is aligned with the learning outcomes and feasible within the constraints of the Open EdX platform. 
  • I developed a system to find and track Open Educational Resource assets to ensure copyright compliance and allow for rapid review of assets  by TLL team members.