Writing in the August 2013 issue of Scientific American, Robert A. Lue made the case that “the future of on-campus learning lies in the right combination of digital and traditional tools.” Specifically, integrative online education innovations such as HarvardX benefit not just online students, but also on-campus students and the faculty themselves. Lue is the Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, faculty director of HarvardX, and professor in the department of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard University. He has also promoted Harvard’s leading role in the EdX revolution in education.
“Online classes are not just about sharing educational materials via the Internet; they are also about developing new ways of teaching based on those materials for both on-campus and online audiences. Many of my colleagues are already applying digital tools from online courses in an effort to transform student experiences here in Cambridge, Mass.,” he wrote.
He added, “Underlying all these exciting efforts is the awareness that experimentation is key and that we do not yet know how to best harness the enormous positive potential of the online revolution for on-campus learning. This is why every course or module in HarvardX—Harvard’s university-wide digital-education initiative that includes participation in edX—has an associated research component.”
The article, originally published with the title “Experimentation Is Key”, is available here.
For more about HarvardX, see “EdX: Transforming the Future of Education!“
For more about Rob Lue, see “Robert Lue Fills New Faculty Director Position at Bok Center“
