New teaching tool aims to boost inclusion in the classroom
November 1, 2019 – A new web application being piloted this year at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health aims to help faculty members better understand their teaching behaviors so that they can help all students in their classes feel welcome and encouraged to participate.
Teachly, an educational platform developed at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), was used in eight classes at Harvard Chan School this past spring and is being used in eight classes currently. By providing faculty with data on their teaching practices and student participation, the platform can help make teaching more effective, create more balanced and inclusive classrooms, and boost student engagement, according to Jennifer Betancourt, director for educational policy.
The three key features of the platform include detailed student profiles, culled from a student survey taken at the beginning of courses, that help faculty get to know their students; dashboards that show graphs of student participation patterns by gender or racial/ethnic minority group; and a dynamic on-screen seating chart that shows students’ class participation in real-time by outlining their photos in different colors—for example, red for those participating the least and green for those participating the most.
Armed with this visual data, faculty can easily identify students who may need support to participate more fully in class sessions, and can also better understand their own teaching practices that may hinder participation, such as calling too often on male students or students from the U.S. If certain individuals or groups aren’t being included enough in class discussions, instructors might review students’ profiles to learn more about their background and interests to get ideas on ways to better engage them.
Student attendance and participation are important components of the teaching and learning experience in many courses at Harvard Chan School, said Betancourt. A teaching assistant typically captures their observations of student participation using a spreadsheet, and accuracy can be a challenge. Teachly enables teaching assistants to enter data into the web application during each class session more quickly and accurately, and to work with instructors on applying the data to their teaching strategies.
Teachly was co-created and pioneered in 2015 by HKS lecturers Dan Levy and Teddy Svoronos, who wanted a tool to help them improve their own teaching. At a May convening earlier this year, members of the Teachly teams from HKS and Harvard Chan School discussed their experiences with the platform. Levy talked about how Teachly made him aware of his own unconscious bias. In 2014, Teachly data from one of his classes showed that there was 36% female participation—even though female enrollment was 46%. “This was a total shock for me,” he said. “I thought I was calling fairly. I thought I didn’t have any bias.” By providing concrete data, “Teachly allowed me to be much more deliberate in the classroom as to the choices I was making,” he said. Over time, Levy has been able to eliminate the gender gap in his classes.
The platform has now been piloted in more than 120 HKS courses and 18 courses at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. After learning in 2017 about how Teachly was benefiting HKS instructors, Betancourt, Professor of Epidemiology Sonia Hernández-Díaz, and Senior Associate Dean for Professional Education Nancy Turnbull became interested in piloting the software at Harvard Chan School. They worked with HKS colleagues to apply for a pedagogy award through the Dean’s Fund for Scientific Advancement and received the award in the fall of 2018.
At the May convening, participants discussed how to improve the functionality of the Teachly software, the pilot experience at Harvard Chan, and the potential for scalability at the School. The group will meet again next spring.
Said Betancourt, “We have seen that Teachly data allows faculty to benefit from weekly insightful feedback and encourages a more systematic and inclusive approach to engaging with students.”
photos: Kent Dayton
