# long interview on projects
09:40:33:22 - 09:40:39:20
Speaker 1
I think you just like Kate and.
09:40:39:22 - 09:41:03:23
Speaker 2
Okay. And so sometimes I'll be I can be quite close, but I think naturally I'll probably be in this this kind of zone. And and so I will do an intro to what this sort of activity is. And you guys keep talking because this is like a dynamic. Mike And so it's not a problem. So essentially what we're going to do is devise this kind of live oral essay writing machine.
09:41:04:01 - 09:41:26:02
Speaker 2
And so already it's valuable for anyone to talk about what they're going to write about for the trade writing about it. It gets their ideas to be clearer and so on. But it would be cool if we could develop a system that allows people to go relatively quickly and seamlessly and automatically from improvised speech to to writing. And so just transcribing it school.
09:41:26:07 - 09:41:54:11
Speaker 2
But it would also be lovely if we can take things like index cards and all the usual learning lab things and integrate those elegantly. Um, what's happening? Is that sounding okay? Sounds amazing. Cool. So yeah, so.
09:41:54:13 - 09:41:56:18
Speaker 1
It's transcribing them.
09:41:56:20 - 09:42:19:17
Speaker 2
Not live. No, no, no. I mean, so so that's like if if Casey So and again I was setting up this, this project so it's still cool to have this in there. So one thing we want is the ability to perform live transcriptions that we can then handle on the back end. And so, Sophie, in case you're going to do their best to find some tools that will let us do this, but if we can't find that, it's totally cool to do this after the fact.
09:42:19:18 - 09:42:36:04
Speaker 2
I think what we can do is we can use the slack based data we're getting, which is all timestamp data that comes from tags being pressed or people putting, you know, typing these things into Slack that can segment stuff using either an EDL or FCP XML that we generate out of the error table and then import into resolve.
09:42:36:04 - 09:42:55:17
Speaker 2
And then now that, you know, hit here the 30 seconds that Marlene was talking about this, then when we transcribe that 32nd file that gets exported, we'll get, you know, the stuff that goes along with it that's just a little bit inelegant because it involves ingesting and then creating the project and then, you know, pushing them out the door for some workflows like horizons or something like that.
09:42:55:21 - 09:43:15:07
Speaker 2
Totally fine, because the, you know, production timeline is of the order of, you know, a week, 2 to 3 months. It's more like when we want to do it live. If we want to be able to show someone some, you know, live essay they've created on the fly, that's where we need a kind of like instantaneous turnaround has got to happen on the server and then be sent right back out on.
09:43:15:09 - 09:43:24:11
Speaker 2
All right descriptions and then will you try do you want to do this at the Logger or do you want to type in a title in live? Yeah, I'm.
09:43:24:11 - 09:43:31:19
Speaker 1
About to do a longer thing. But then I was wondering I should use.
09:43:31:21 - 09:43:33:03
Speaker 2
You know, it's weird right.
09:43:33:05 - 09:43:37:01
Speaker 1
Now because I'm also going to be trying to like I manually.
09:43:37:03 - 09:43:41:18
Speaker 2
Like, yeah, but don't have what I'm saying. It's like we want to get that from the video.
09:43:41:20 - 09:43:42:18
Speaker 1
So I'm not doing that.
09:43:42:18 - 09:43:52:16
Speaker 2
Only I feel like it's cool if, if you should be typing what we're talking about into a channel that has timestamps that were logging, I just don't know if that exists.
09:43:52:18 - 09:44:00:06
Speaker 1
So so long you have to give them like it's not like it the project, you know, for each project. Right.
09:44:00:06 - 09:44:16:14
Speaker 2
But what if okay so what if this you do the logger and we do start stop in the logger and then in the channel called Live in the box and or Slack can you type in what's essentially the title of that thing Whatever it is. And so it could just be the project title or something.
09:44:16:16 - 09:44:21:21
Speaker 1
But I'm doing so right now. So I just might be a little slow with that, but that's okay.
09:44:21:23 - 09:44:27:01
Speaker 2
Well, maybe we need more than one person. Maybe someone else should do the start stop and then you should type in the title.
09:44:27:03 - 09:44:41:00
Speaker 1
But yeah, the other thing I guess I could do is like probably 2 minutes, but it's like I could go to the studio office and just type in when start comes out of the project.
09:44:41:02 - 09:44:46:03
Speaker 2
Um, yeah, that's very smart.
09:44:46:05 - 09:44:50:17
Speaker 1
No, I like the idea of having it and.
09:44:50:19 - 09:44:52:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, over between different.
09:44:52:18 - 09:44:53:12
Speaker 1
Workspaces.
09:44:53:12 - 09:45:19:22
Speaker 2
And so this should be part of the board essentially. There should be like a essentially there is a start button and then there's a start button. And then when you hit this, this takes you to a modal that says, you know, title. And then there's like a text field that you fit that you fill in and then actually there's like a stop button.
09:45:19:22 - 09:45:26:09
Speaker 2
And that's how we make sure we know that we're not accidentally hitting start twice.
09:45:26:11 - 09:45:29:21
Speaker 1
And then the motor goes away and then you start.
09:45:29:23 - 09:45:44:17
Speaker 2
And then this has like a unique ID associated with it. Okay, Well, so we've solved that problem. Danny, let's. All right, let's do the thing you actually want to do before you have to go.
09:45:44:20 - 09:45:48:08
Speaker 1
All right, All right.
09:45:48:10 - 09:45:54:23
Speaker 2
Okay. I can also just try seeing the title myself at the beginning of each thing. Um, well.
09:45:55:00 - 09:46:07:08
Speaker 1
I'll stop for now. I mean, I can just go to the studio on their table.
09:46:07:13 - 09:46:09:23
Speaker 2
Yeah. Um.
09:46:10:01 - 09:46:12:01
Speaker 1
Although, let me see if there's, like, a notice field or.
09:46:12:01 - 09:46:15:11
Speaker 2
Something where you can create it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean.
09:46:15:13 - 09:46:29:05
Speaker 1
It's so cool. So I'm just going to just start and stop.
09:46:29:07 - 09:46:59:12
Speaker 2
Cool. Okay. Um, I should be moving cards to for, like, cases, machine learning goals. Very simple. So it's my store, right? Sure.
09:46:59:13 - 09:47:05:08
Speaker 1
23,000. The perfect college.
09:47:05:10 - 09:47:51:07
Speaker 2
You're starting with the the challenging one. So I can solve for some of these. I should do some, like, larger just ification of it because this needs to be framed with that basically. And so. All right. So now we're starting again. Stop, start. Okay. Yeah. So we frequently partner with student groups, not necessarily always students in courses when the students are doing something that is in alignment with the box center's mission or something that we could imagine building out a capacity that the learning lab really needs.
09:47:51:09 - 09:48:18:03
Speaker 2
And so with the Harvard Class Committee of 2023, they approached us wanting to make a video that articulated for their, you know, their group or their the students they're trying to reach out to why it is they should get involved in the, you know, giving in their in their senior years. So at a pretty literal level, us kind of supporting Harvard in the continued development of Harvard's ability to sustain itself is kind of our you know that's part of our job being a Harvard staff.
09:48:18:05 - 09:48:36:04
Speaker 2
But also I think it's our job in a larger sense to help students use non text based media video, you know, other forms to communicate their ideas. And this is an instance where students are trying to trying to do that. Now, when it comes to the actual capacities in the studio that they help us build out, some of these are relatively mundane.
09:48:36:04 - 09:48:54:22
Speaker 2
In this case, we just wanted to be able to shoot against a particular wall in the studio that didn't have anything on it at the moment. And one of the things we use is occasions like this for us to get a little bit of free labor out of the students. And they came in and they painted this wonderful beginnings, at least of a mural that since the layoffs have continued to augment over time.
09:48:55:00 - 09:49:13:15
Speaker 2
And so that's sort of like one of these traces that we like to leave behind in the learning lab. Of all the projects we've done this year, sometimes we think of the space itself as this ongoing story of everything that has happened within it, and that wall is kind of functioning this way. So it didn't cost us a lot of time, you know, 90 minutes or so.
09:49:13:17 - 09:49:29:18
Speaker 2
And that actually is, you know, roughly commensurate with the kind of improvement to the space that it made. But I think it's a nice little story, at least of of a touch point between us and an A student group. And it kind of shows you the ways in which they are the part of what helps build the magic of the space.
09:49:29:18 - 09:49:47:02
Speaker 2
Because when you look there and you see the mural in the back now of all the events that we have run since, it's augmenting every last one of those events, at least a little bit, and it's a thousand little things like that each year that go into making the space what it is.
09:49:47:04 - 09:49:49:09
Unknown
Okay, the next one.
09:49:49:11 - 09:49:54:23
Speaker 1
Do you think I'm not getting started yet? We have a ton of projects that are office hours.
09:49:55:00 - 09:49:55:12
Speaker 2
Yeah.
09:49:55:14 - 09:49:57:16
Speaker 1
They're a little like project description for.
09:49:57:18 - 09:50:01:04
Speaker 2
For office hours in its totality use for that time And.
09:50:01:04 - 09:50:08:20
Speaker 1
So yeah right so I would start when you're ready. Ready.
09:50:08:22 - 09:50:33:12
Speaker 2
So one of the things that lies at the heart of the learning lab is this idea that consulting with faculty alone is not enough to achieve pedagogical innovations. I can't just sit there with the professor and convince him or her to sign a podcast and let them go on their merry way and be done with it. What we know is we actually need to provide scaffolded support for all the students and instructors in that kind of teaching and learning community.
09:50:33:12 - 09:50:52:16
Speaker 2
That is the class. If that project is going to turn out okay. And so we've largely models that model ourselves in many ways on a zone where this happens really well in higher ed, and that's writing programs. Students take a first year writing course, but that's not it. There also is a writing across the curriculum program that supports faculty that are assigning writing in upper level courses.
09:50:52:18 - 09:51:25:21
Speaker 2
There are peer writing tutors that, you know, work at Harvard in the Barker Center to help students out when they're writing their papers and many other things besides. And we've tried to mirror a lot of those structures in the learning lab as we support the projects of the courses that come in here. So within that context, office hours are pretty essential because that's a spot where the undergrads that work here, the Learning lab undergrad fellows, can provide support to students and all the courses that we're working with as they're doing, you know, things they've never done before, making podcasts, making video games, designing infographics, making posters.
09:51:25:23 - 09:51:47:18
Speaker 2
There's a sense in which these are I mean, they're fun, but they can also be scary or intimidating for students. I knew when I was a student and I got assigned a paper, a particular length, I always knew I could finish that if I just stayed up late enough, maybe a six page paper, I'd stay up till midnight, maybe 8 to 10 might be in the 3 to 4 zone, but I could get it done in a single night if I just stayed up long enough.
09:51:47:20 - 09:52:19:06
Speaker 2
A lot of the things were assigning take students outside of that world. Even they don't know they could stay up forever maybe and get some of these things done if they don't have the right support for it. And so we want to make sure that we're really holding them, that we're really helping them get through this thing. And I mean, like, maybe that makes it sound too negative that we're helping them excel in this project by providing support in the form of our undergrad fellows and then also our senior staff who are there to answer any questions that go beyond our undergrad fellow's expertise.
09:52:19:08 - 09:52:24:20
Speaker 2
I feel like this is an oral exam on the learning lab. You're making me take, just.
09:52:24:20 - 09:52:30:14
Speaker 1
For clarification course has been helping some of these project descriptions. You are talking a lot.
09:52:30:14 - 09:52:32:07
Speaker 2
More than Cristina's in.
09:52:32:07 - 09:52:34:20
Speaker 1
Terms of what are you looking for in terms of length?
09:52:34:22 - 09:53:07:04
Speaker 2
Well, I think what I'm kind of doing, I would more say these are kind of like project reports. So I don't know what she's they're different than we did. Right. So if you think of this in terms of web design, there's going to be a page that says, you know, l l projects. And then on this page there will be lots of little cards that have a piece of media, maybe a thumbnail of an image, and then they're going to have title and then three line description or so.
09:53:07:06 - 09:53:29:17
Speaker 2
We need that for everything. But then if I click that right, then I'm going to another page and then other page is where I actually have an embedded piece of media right? And then I have lots of text and then maybe another embedded piece of media with a, you know, a lot of text. And this is of the order of like 2 to 3 paragraphs.
09:53:29:18 - 09:53:46:06
Speaker 2
So we need both of these things. Now, it might be that like this one here, we get those more frequently for honor, like at least one per meta project per year or something like that. We don't have necessarily 300 them, but I'm not saying we shouldn't have, you know, as many as we can do.
09:53:46:08 - 09:53:50:04
Speaker 1
Like what you're saying. So I think it's great.
09:53:50:06 - 09:54:06:14
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think that like to me it's only worth it doing this if we're going to do that. If you just need like two sentences that I can, I can do that. But I would I think a good workflow for this is like, get the paragraphs out tomorrow and then let's ask you to turn this. I'm not joking like into a 2 to 3 sentence summary, okay.
09:54:06:16 - 09:54:10:19
Speaker 2
And see if we can automate that like that's part of building up the system.
09:54:10:21 - 09:54:24:18
Speaker 1
Thank you for that. All right. The next one is I know a lot of things about that are frequent or they just open up like five.
09:54:24:19 - 09:54:40:22
Speaker 2
I need your help remembering the distinctions between the groups. I think that is roughly from our perspective, it's similar. Um, I think Star Friedman maybe is like earlier career. An element is later.
09:54:41:00 - 09:54:45:12
Speaker 1
On is that everyone associates on for emerging science research.
09:54:45:14 - 09:54:53:01
Speaker 2
Okay in the star Friedman is more high risk one of them is like high risk.
09:54:53:03 - 09:55:16:13
Speaker 1
Advanced early career high risk high performance yeah engineering conducted of the school of Chan and sees this. And then Sara Friedman for it's also scientific research. So the challenge is so.
09:55:16:15 - 09:55:22:07
Speaker 2
I mean some often it's the same people that are getting it, so they really overlap.
09:55:22:09 - 09:55:32:09
Speaker 1
It's just, it's, they work in their research programs within the physical and social sciences on the subject areas.
09:55:32:10 - 09:55:51:11
Speaker 2
I mean, yeah, this is one that maybe has the language about being at a 45 degree angle to the and so they're both innovations in other languages like high risk. I think if I remember those sentences, I could do things. We can put stuff like that we can do after that. So it's not an oral exam. Um.
09:55:51:13 - 09:55:54:05
Speaker 1
I'll start and you'll talk about.
09:55:54:07 - 09:56:41:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, right. So, so for certain projects supporting faculty, you have to communicate their scientific research or their project proposals to broader general audiences. We've pulled together the Harvard Horizons mentoring team to provide a kind of abbreviated sequence of support for the Star Freeman program and the Element Fellows program. And this means that we help them out. Think about the story that they're telling in these short, you know, 5 to 10 minute presentation lines, how to make sure that the audience of non-specialists really gets why the research matters, gets why the project is important, understands the nature of the outcomes, maybe why it's a high risk, high reward project, or why it is at a 45
09:56:41:12 - 09:57:02:08
Speaker 2
degree angle to the discipline as it stands right now. And then we work with them on the visual presentation of those arguments and, you know, slide presentations and various animations that are constructing or, you know, photos that are coming from, you know, microscopes. And then we help them out also on the oral dimensions of that. And so this is one of the more exciting things we work on.
09:57:02:08 - 09:57:38:07
Speaker 2
And it's one of the ways in which we're trying to expand on the very successful Harvard Horizons program in this case by providing that type of support to faculty. And you may ask, in what sense is this related to the Center's core mission of supporting, you know, excellence in teaching and learning? And I think what we're finding is that for a lot of faculty, they're increasingly interested in developing the skills required to teach the world so that their ideas are not merely shared with other folks in their discipline, but they're shared with the public, with, you know, funding agencies, even, you know, with a broader set of publics around the institution and that go beyond
09:57:38:07 - 09:58:03:00
Speaker 2
just just their discipline. And it's kind of nice that the Teaching and Learning Center has this skill set of helping researchers communicate ideas to non specialists, because that's kind of what, you know, teaching teaching is all about. And this kind of broader applicability it has today, especially for people that are working in zones of research that that really should be impacting the world, whether they're studying climate science or they're studying vaccines.
09:58:03:01 - 09:58:12:07
Speaker 2
We found recently, you know, considerably more excitement in faculty for this type of support. And we hope to be able to grow it in the future.
09:58:12:09 - 09:58:17:16
Speaker 1
Awesome. Thank you. Okay. The next one is the black Arts left.
09:58:17:18 - 09:58:31:12
Speaker 2
Mm hmm. Okay. Yeah. And then and that event is the what was the title of it? It was the. It was called The Cipher. Yeah.
09:58:31:13 - 09:58:37:12
Speaker 1
Um, I will see if I have a more detailed just for a minute.
09:58:37:14 - 09:58:44:12
Speaker 2
And then remind me again if is it true to say we got this by way of one of shows as former students.
09:58:44:14 - 09:59:06:15
Speaker 1
Either as a student to reach out to? Let's just remember she she tried to be a lot I don't know if she was what sort Mariah like how to write she said after this and there were a lot of during other classes that was okay.
09:59:06:16 - 09:59:10:22
Speaker 2
It's not it's no big deal.
09:59:11:00 - 09:59:11:15
Speaker 1
All right. Are you.
09:59:11:15 - 09:59:16:00
Speaker 2
Ready? Um, yeah.
09:59:16:02 - 09:59:21:09
Speaker 1
What? We talked a nice little opening. You know.
09:59:21:11 - 09:59:22:11
Speaker 2
Yeah.
09:59:22:13 - 09:59:30:08
Speaker 1
Um, well, actually, take a look at our student notes, but I think we basically said, just, like.
09:59:30:08 - 09:59:46:15
Speaker 2
Help us build. Yeah, it's building capacity argument. Yeah. And then for all of the ones we do that, like, I would love to have like a specific shot or two, even like a before and after or something that kind of like indicates, hey, here's what they, they helped us do.
09:59:46:17 - 09:59:48:02
Speaker 1
A shot in the studio.
09:59:48:04 - 10:00:16:19
Speaker 2
Yeah. The yeah so and so some of this can be repetitive because like again we're we're going to kind of preface every one of these student things with that little, you know, thing. And if I keep doing it, I'll just take the best one. Okay. So the Learning Lab frequently partners with student groups. When those student groups are doing something that's in alignment with the box center's core mission of supporting you know, teaching and learning excellence and teaching and learning.
10:00:16:21 - 10:01:01:19
Speaker 2
And this year we worked with the Black Arts Collective. We wanted to host a cipher where students would improvise various hip hop songs and routines that they had. I guess like they probably haven't or they're not supposed to have rehearsed them in advance, but there's a degree of improvization and a degree of preparation. And what's kind of interesting about this is we have some experience working with a ZBZ chorus where students study both Homer and then also Jay-Z, and they learn the ways in which certain sorts of long form or non long poetic lines function as these repeatable mechanics expertise within and within, which can allow you to improvise basically ad infinitum.
10:01:01:19 - 10:01:28:12
Speaker 2
If you've mastered these particular sorts of moves. And so we've been interested in building up our studio's capacity to allow students to perform spoken word poetry, to allow them to sing, to allow them even just to perform standard oral presentations, but maybe to do so in a slightly heightened gamified ways that the students can kind of develop the structure and rhythm of their ideas as a kind of scaffolding scaffolding activity on the way to writing.
10:01:28:13 - 10:01:55:20
Speaker 2
So anyways, with that as a as a backdrop and we were approached by the Black Arts Collective to host the cipher, we were kind of excited to do it because we'd already dabbled in this a little bit in the context of a 15 student seminar. We started developing the capacities to have different setups around the studio, different performance stages around the studio, but this allowed us to take it to another level and these students got very excited about coming into the studio and setting it up, and they really pushed all of the equipment to its its limits, not its breaking points, but its limits.
10:01:55:22 - 10:02:12:10
Speaker 2
And we learned a lot about this. So we were able to bring back into our day to day work at the Learning Lab to support courses when they come in. So that was mind blowing. But we will about when we can edit a bit.
10:02:12:12 - 10:02:17:21
Unknown
Very supporting things sort of thing. So it's like.
10:02:17:23 - 10:02:19:11
Speaker 1
The legacy of slavery.
10:02:19:11 - 10:02:24:17
Unknown
Very inspiring stories about the staff of the.
10:02:24:19 - 10:02:43:08
Speaker 2
But for these, I don't think we're ever really going to report on them. So they don't need the long things. These can just be two sentences and so we can just go rapid fire with these. And honestly, like for some of them, this is the wrong way to do it. The best way is just to take the two sentence blurb that Adam has on Harvard legacy of slavery.
10:02:43:08 - 10:02:48:02
Speaker 2
Right? Because we don't want to like have it be a misrepresentation of what he's doing.
10:02:48:04 - 10:02:56:03
Speaker 1
I think too, like we were doing we were breaking it down differently. Now I think we'll go with like this document.
10:02:56:05 - 10:03:00:05
Speaker 2
Like, yeah.
10:03:00:07 - 10:03:06:07
Speaker 1
We might have like, but that's not what we're doing.
10:03:06:09 - 10:03:25:03
Speaker 2
So I think it's better for me to do something that's like, like if we're doing this 2 to 3 paragraph thing now, it's a broader articulation of why we do that support for like, I know we do it because like we should, but I just mean like if we're if this is in a learning lab report page, what we would want to say about that, I think that would.
10:03:25:03 - 10:03:28:04
Speaker 1
Be great and I'll just log is like.
10:03:28:06 - 10:03:44:18
Unknown
Stop and and figure out later. Exactly and you know also change the way that but anyway sure Yeah.
10:03:44:20 - 10:04:12:06
Speaker 2
So in the same way that we find faculty and students being drawn to non text based modes of communication to learn and then to present academic ideas even within the box center, whatever we're doing, whether it's running a program or an event, we find our internal staff drawn to other means of communication beyond text alone. And so the Learning Lab often finds itself in the role of production studio in support of other projects at the box.
10:04:12:06 - 10:04:40:00
Speaker 2
And we're delighted to do this for sure. And and one of the arguments we constantly make when supporting projects like this in the undergrad curriculum I think holds true for for our internal walk center projects as well. One of the goals is not merely to to do something, but to tell others what you did to perform this kind of act of visual storytelling around an event or around a program for a number of reasons.
10:04:40:02 - 10:05:10:01
Speaker 2
With an institution, you have to report on what you're doing. There are a lot of people, deans and donors, that want to know what you're up to, and it's helpful to have visual storytelling in support of that. But then it's also incredibly helpful at the level of community building. One of the things that the box center as a whole is trying to do is to make everyone on campus care about teaching and learning as much as they can to have a real sense of event around the events that we create to really, you know, let people know that, you know, there's a thriving teaching and learning community at Harvard.
10:05:10:03 - 10:05:32:01
Speaker 2
And so the media that we acquire things like the teaching conference or in the box seminar program or at special events like the, um, faculty seminar on Harvard in the Legacy of slavery, these have this kind of community building role. And if you think of your own community is that you live in, a lot of them are supported by things like Instagram and YouTube and Tock these days.
10:05:32:05 - 10:05:49:20
Speaker 2
Those are part of what allow us to know that others care about what we're doing. It allows us to share with our friends what we're doing, and that's a large part of community these days anyways. And so that that probably is one of the key roles that the Learning Lab plays when it comes to the infrastructural support of the block center.
10:05:49:22 - 10:06:04:14
Speaker 1
Thank you. Um, the next one is, um, Sarah Emery is on the seminar and to just like, uh, they came in here in the fall. Yeah. Did a public speaking session.
10:06:04:16 - 10:06:26:07
Speaker 2
Um, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it's going to be similar to anything we did with Pamela as well. I think again, here we want to just get Sarah's description of what it is, and we don't need to do a whole two three paragraph thing on it. It's like, this is what this one is. We did one of our, you know, oral presentation support activities and so it's always a start.
10:06:26:09 - 10:06:36:13
Speaker 2
Um, yeah, sure. But I guess what I'm saying is I would do a defense of that broader category of thing. And then this is one of those things for the two line description of Sarah, this thing.
10:06:36:15 - 10:06:38:13
Speaker 1
That's very, very head Start.
10:06:38:15 - 10:07:06:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. Okay. So one of the things that the Learning Lab studio is really great at doing is facilitating the development of oral and visual presentation skills because we have all these overhead cameras where you can, you know, very quickly prototype presentations and visual information. And then we have stages, we have microphones, we have lots, we have cameras, lots of ways of capturing people speaking.
10:07:06:12 - 10:07:27:15
Speaker 2
It means that we can, first of all, kind of familiarize the actor the classroom presentation in ways that are sometimes helpful for learners. We can document and record it so that they can watch it back later. We can help them think about way performing, you know, for videos is different from performing on the stage or in the classroom or in, you know, small discussion settings.
10:07:27:17 - 10:07:48:10
Speaker 2
And so this means we get a lot of that sort of work in in in our studio. Our media has very frequently lead workshops for sections where students are doing some kind of oral presentation. Having developed those skills, we do this for larger projects like Harvard Horizons, where we work with Erica Bailey, the arts head of voice and speech, to support the development of oral presentation skills.
10:07:48:12 - 10:08:04:21
Speaker 2
And then we do it a lot for Bok Center seminars and internal programs as well. And one of the examples of this is and then here we would insert the two sentence description of Sarah's seminar for, for the Itps, along with like an image of whatever they did, they did not do well.
10:08:04:23 - 10:08:26:16
Speaker 1
Some thank you. The next one is the Although maybe I could ask you to talk about this one because I talk about this a lot, but see you ten. We called it last semester. We we weren't naming the projects, the workshop we just called the final project support. Mm. I think there was just one workshop.
10:08:26:18 - 10:08:39:12
Speaker 2
And not one project support. This time. Sorry. Or there is like, I'm just. How many projects do we have for them. Yeah, that's one, that's what I'm wondering.
10:08:39:14 - 10:08:45:17
Speaker 1
We just to, I think we did one workshop.
10:08:45:19 - 10:08:46:05
Speaker 2
But this.
10:08:46:05 - 10:08:52:18
Speaker 1
Is like we need to do like if we wanted to make it similar to this year, we would have like office.
10:08:52:18 - 10:08:58:21
Speaker 2
Hours. Yeah, you just had that There were this term, I mean because this is still this year or no.
10:08:58:23 - 10:09:02:09
Speaker 1
Work to them. Oh but yes like yeah.
10:09:02:11 - 10:09:03:21
Speaker 2
That's what that's like. I mean like.
10:09:03:21 - 10:09:05:10
Speaker 1
Try to do that.
10:09:05:12 - 10:09:08:17
Speaker 2
We're like, yeah, it's fine. That's one, that's one, that's one way that.
10:09:08:18 - 10:09:11:18
Speaker 1
This will be different. But you do remember the workshop because I don't.
10:09:11:20 - 10:09:29:00
Speaker 2
Um, I think you know about it. Well, it's more than we can talk about just the why we support this thing. And the workshop is on the way to the final project. And so you can ask if Jordan, Kristine want to talk about the workshop itself. That's totally cool. But the broader kind of, you know, defense of why we work with that program is easy.
10:09:29:05 - 10:09:29:09
Speaker 2
Okay.
10:09:29:12 - 10:09:31:06
Speaker 1
All right. Let's start now.
10:09:31:08 - 10:09:57:23
Speaker 2
Okay. So every year we work with C ten or the creativity and entrepreneurship ten where students are learning how to develop innovative ventures that make differences in in the world. And one of the roles of the Learning Lab within that is to help the students think about how to communicate that venture, how to create, you know, a pitch for a product, or how to tell people why, you know, intervention that they're designing is something that really matters.
10:09:58:00 - 10:10:16:07
Speaker 2
And here we find students frequently drawn to media other than text alone, not just because their course is assigned. It, of course, is a sign of a reason. It's that this is what's going to persuade people today, at least, that they should invest in your company, invest in your product, invest in your idea for how things should be different.
10:10:16:09 - 10:10:37:04
Speaker 2
And so the Learning Lab has played a key role since the development of that program in helping students learn those, the skills of presenting your ideas and those in those ways, that's not. And then I think that I mean, Jordan probably did it with or without. Christine is like a pitch pitch assignment. Basically, it's cool to have and we can just have like a there'll be lots of photos and things like that.
10:10:37:06 - 10:10:52:05
Speaker 1
Okay, Thank you. The next thing we have is student recording support or student project recordings for of course, we weren't working once, so if you wanted to talk about, I could start and stop different ways just in general, recording support.
10:10:52:07 - 10:10:54:02
Speaker 2
For everything and then.
10:10:54:04 - 10:11:02:12
Speaker 1
Maybe like a slightly different version or not, maybe just some other additional sentence about we're saying yes to these.
10:11:02:14 - 10:11:08:13
Unknown
Courses that we're not in touch with or supporting their assignments?
10:11:08:15 - 10:11:28:19
Speaker 2
Yeah, I don't think that that will get as like I can't imagine us reporting on that in that like I think we'll add that add those things up and maybe we can think about what we'll say surrounding that. But that's another thing that will end up like on the website is, is a set of things. But the student credit thing, we can say that.
10:11:28:21 - 10:11:53:16
Speaker 2
Sure. So when we meet with a faculty member to design a support plan for the year, one of the things we'll think about is to what extent the students should capture and produce all of the media for the course and to what extent the Learning Lab potentially should help them out. With our studio capacity here, we don't have the capacity to support every Harvard student and every media project they're ever going to make.
10:11:53:18 - 10:12:11:06
Speaker 2
And that's one of the reasons why at the beginning we want to think with faculty about how best to use our resources in support of the course and in some cases, the faculty perhaps are going to demand the students shoot all the video themselves in the context of, let's say, a film class where students are studying a film and they're meant to reproduce.
10:12:11:10 - 10:12:40:15
Speaker 2
One of the shots of that, that film, the faculty member might want students to actually shoot with their iPhone to, you know, match the camera angle or some other elements. But in other contexts students are doing is they're essentially performing an oral presentation, perhaps an oral presentation with some visual aids that they've created out of art supplies. And then that context, it's probably not that important for the students to learn how the cameras work or remember to put batteries in, you know, when they're recording device.
10:12:40:17 - 10:12:58:15
Speaker 2
And so if we can take that technical load off their shoulders, they can focus on the parts that they're really, really learning from. And in those contexts, we're delighted to provide recording support. And so we've done this for a number of French courses this term. We've done it for a number of Xbox courses. This term we can fill all those those things in.
10:12:58:17 - 10:13:23:16
Speaker 2
And so this is one of the roles of the Learning Lab for when students are moving into these non tech space. Media is if there's some technical lift that doesn't seem core to the learning objectives of the faculty member. We're excited to design a production plan that will actually help them get what they need out of the media without them having to necessarily master unnecessary technical details.
10:13:23:18 - 10:13:47:20
Speaker 2
And then oh, then the rando courses. Yeah. Yeah. So because students, once students have come here for workshop, they know we're here and there are other courses, but they're doing assignments that might, you know, benefit from similar support. There are some instances where students will contact us out of the blue, even if we're not supporting the course. We've never met with a faculty member.
10:13:47:20 - 10:14:09:00
Speaker 2
We don't even know that the course exists. And so it's beyond, you know, our capacity to support every single student on every single project. But we want to do our best to do whatever we can to support students in other courses. And so if we can fit these students in, if their needs are, don't go beyond what we're capable of doing.
10:14:09:01 - 10:14:28:23
Speaker 2
It's so much that we can actually fail to do our or, you know, our core mission of supporting the courses that that are partnering with us. We will definitely try to say yes and support them in whatever they need. And what we do want to do though, is then reach out to the faculty member who is the course head for the course of the students in and just see if we can design a support plan for the coming years.
10:14:28:23 - 10:14:48:21
Speaker 2
It could be that if one student wanted to do this, but maybe more students in that that course would benefit from that support. And we could, you know, think with a faculty member about how we could anticipate that. And where we could schedule it so that we can support it with ease. Or it could be that maybe the faculty member doesn't want us to provide that technical support because that goes beyond what they're they're hoping the students will do in the class.
10:14:48:21 - 10:15:07:19
Speaker 2
And we should know about that, too. And so that that's that's how we handle those those cases. And we try to make sure that it's, you know, deepening our understanding of what's happening across the curriculum in the multimedia space and making sure that we're supporting more new faculty members each and every year.
10:15:07:21 - 10:15:14:05
Unknown
Do you want to, um.
10:15:14:07 - 10:15:19:05
Speaker 2
Or broadly hugs these things? You know, like.
10:15:19:07 - 10:15:20:20
Speaker 1
We got a ton of stuff from Sarah.
10:15:21:01 - 10:15:40:15
Speaker 2
Probably. I think I would slot this in there here. And I know Sarah's not necessarily helping with this, but in a sense she is because she's the liaison and that's how we are kind of connected with this, this project. And so I would probably bucket that, like bundle this with Sarah's stuff to kind of, you know, make that, you know, ever more substantial.
10:15:40:15 - 10:15:59:02
Speaker 2
And then we can use the media from this as we report on that. And so for me, it all fall under the heading of our partnership with Lux's Arts Program and through the MDF program. And then we'd kind of just, you know, explain why that's a thing. So. Sure.
10:15:59:04 - 10:16:06:12
Unknown
So, you know, we have that as a project.
10:16:06:13 - 10:16:10:19
Speaker 1
Sarah We can always ask for.
10:16:10:21 - 10:16:23:17
Unknown
Gallery of office hours.
10:16:23:19 - 10:16:27:18
Speaker 1
Workshop review.
10:16:27:20 - 10:17:01:15
Speaker 2
You know? So anybody else? Sure. So the center's core mission is to support teaching and learning excellence within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. But we do periodically partner with other schools when, you know, both parties can get something out of it that goes far beyond the resources that they're putting into it. And one key partner for us over the years has been the Harvard Graduate School of Education in particular, particularly the zones that work on arts and education and technology and education.
10:17:01:17 - 10:17:29:09
Speaker 2
In this past year, we had a media design fellow focusing on arts and education initiatives within within Alexi, and we should make sure we have the right new acronym. Basically, I still don't know what it is. And, and this had many, many, you know, important results. It's great for us just to get to meet the students that are going to in in search of support on projects related to arts and education because these are the folks who are going to be innovating in that space.
10:17:29:09 - 10:17:48:20
Speaker 2
And that space is our space. There's a sense in which many of them are kind of like like our loves one another three or four years. On, having entered the workforce in fields related to education and the arts. And we often learn important things from interacting with them that we can then bring in to our our work in the learning lab.
10:17:48:22 - 10:18:13:12
Speaker 2
Also, what they are learning in the Harvard Graduate School of Education are obviously approaches to education. And this is one of the ways in which the Learning Lab staff can kind of keep connected to folks who have that as their primary mission, which is research into education, teaching, learning, the arts technology, because, you know, we're a support organization and we do our best to kind of keep up with things by reading, research and scholarship in the field.
10:18:13:14 - 10:18:39:05
Speaker 2
But it's not the primary function of the center to produce original research. And so it's nice for us to kind of keep connected to the faculty over the Graduate School of Education, because that is their their primary role. And then sorry, there was like the project again for forgetting one of the projects you said that did. Yeah, that's kind of, that's more what I was thinking about when I was thinking about partnering with the faculty there.
10:18:39:05 - 10:18:57:22
Speaker 2
I was thinking like it could be a picture and it's like me teaming up with Tina is like, that's my way of kind of, you know, getting more connected to the, you know, experts in the field that are doing this, that and the other thing I was thinking more about the like the oh, the hip hop thing, you know, that's true.
10:18:58:00 - 10:19:45:14
Speaker 2
Um, is this more the MTF thing? Okay. You know, just started getting, um, and what was really great about having a media design fellow devoted entirely to, to the Graduate Graduate School of Education is that they were able to really help make sure we got the most out of the partnership for the year. And so sometimes when just students show up and we can help them or not help them to bring our busy we are we can hit the end of the year and have done a few random things for one school or other, but it doesn't feel like it adds up to what it could add up to if we had, you know, been
10:19:45:14 - 10:20:07:09
Speaker 2
more intentional in our approach. And what's great about having, you know, one person meeting a design fellow devoted to that domain for the entire year is that they can they can help us look for patterns. They can help us make sure that the support is aggregating into something larger. They can help us wrap up, wrap it up into a story of the partnership that helps us then think about where to take it in the coming year.
10:20:07:15 - 10:20:23:16
Speaker 2
And that's what was so great about having a media design fellow in this in this zone. And when we look back across the projects that she supported over over the past eight months, it's really impressive just how many there are, how much media we have from them, how many events that we supported, how many students we got to get into contact with.
10:20:23:18 - 10:20:35:00
Speaker 2
And this has us, you know, excited about the coming year or next.
10:20:35:01 - 10:20:36:13
Speaker 1
You know.
10:20:36:15 - 10:20:40:04
Speaker 2
I thought we were supposed to do like 10 minutes and.
10:20:40:06 - 10:20:42:04
Speaker 1
I was supposed.
10:20:42:06 - 10:20:45:15
Speaker 2
Yeah, you should go. Okay. EMR, EMR, What do.
10:20:45:17 - 10:20:51:22
Speaker 1
You want to do to the memory diaspora we have? It was like, Yeah.
10:20:52:00 - 10:20:55:03
Speaker 2
It's a workshop and an event and different things, right?
10:20:55:05 - 10:20:58:17
Speaker 1
I would support, but I do think we could break it up more.
10:20:58:18 - 10:20:59:11
Speaker 2
Yeah.
10:20:59:13 - 10:21:04:06
Speaker 1
But if there's anything specific you want to say about this.
10:21:04:08 - 10:21:34:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, sure. Yeah. So EMR insert title here. The students had a relatively open ended final creative project, which was really, really exciting and exciting sort of thing for us to support. And they'd also been looking for themselves in the class at really innovative artworks, some designed for the web, some designed as installation pieces that were really stretching their understanding of just what the, you know, limits of the possible are.
10:21:34:11 - 10:21:54:08
Speaker 2
Luckily for us, it was a smaller class that we could work with each student as an individual and give lots of individual consultations to try to figure out how we could best help them actualize their their dreams of working with things like projection or 3D modeling or video production or with our chroma keying set up in here. There are lots of, you know, toys.
10:21:54:08 - 10:22:20:10
Speaker 2
People call them in the learning lab. They're not just that functional rather than merely playful roles, but there are lots of different options. And what we have to help the students in a context like this do is learn as quickly as possible the basic grammar available to them so they have a taste of all the different tools and understand the kind of functional roles that each of these tools can play so that they can start thinking in this language themselves on their final project.
10:22:20:12 - 10:22:38:12
Speaker 2
It's unlike contexts where we kind of know, Oh, they're trying to produce a five minute podcast. I know what that looks like. I can kind of help them fill in all the the blanks they need to fill in to get that done, or they're doing a five minute PowerPoint presentation. We know what those things look like. We can help them fill in all the blanks on the way to getting that thing done.
10:22:38:12 - 10:22:57:00
Speaker 2
In this context, the ultimate end goal is relatively unknown, and so our approach has to kind of proceed from the other angle, and we try to be as clear and specific as we can be about the range of possibilities each of these tools that each of these mediums affords. So then students can make intentional choices about the ones that they deploy.
10:22:57:01 - 10:23:19:01
Speaker 2
And it's very rewarding for us because what students come up with is often, you know, startlingly surprising and very unlike anything we could have anticipated before. But then it gives us ideas about how we can use the equipment ourselves in many of the other contexts that we find ourselves working in to support Harvard undergrads. Yeah, I done.
10:23:19:03 - 10:23:28:11
Speaker 1
Yeah, we'll do a little more of it. Maybe we can see how it works and see if we can go, since there's a lot more there. It's one more. It's it.
10:23:28:13 - 10:23:31:18
Speaker 2
We're on. This is a lot less work than it was the first time supporting them.
10:23:31:18 - 10:23:37:10
Speaker 1
So I was going to get Mallory shots.
10:23:37:12 - 10:23:55:07
Speaker 2
Amazing. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. This is very important to us. And so let me put this whole lot and what's your back is what have you done up with? So when you see a thing like that about what is going on here in.
10:23:55:09 - 10:23:56:23
Speaker 1
School and we really want.
10:23:56:23 - 10:23:58:17
Unknown
To give you a little background because some of the.