# LL+Mindich
## The Learning Lab
The Bok Center’s Learning Lab is an intergenerational team and a studio space built to support creative approaches to teaching and learning. We meet with faculty to consult with them about their objectives, then we design and prototype new assignments, activities and resources for their courses. The designing and testing is performed by our staff of
* 7 full-time employees
* 14 Media and Design Fellows (graduate students who work 10 hours per week to support teaching innovations in their home departments using the resources of the Learning Lab)
* 20 Learning Lab Undergraduate Fellows (LLUFs) who function as “play-testers” as we prototype (giving us feedback and new ideas), and then when the assignments and activities get launched during the term they frequently function as peer tutors and instructors for students enrolled in the courses we support
* 5 Media Production Assistants

Most of the projects we support encourage students to learn and present their ideas in new media: video essay assignments, podcasts, infographics, oral presentations, and more. But students are not merely learning to create in these media; they are learning *through* filming, podcasting, 3d-modeling, and so on. These new media are, like academic writing, important forms through which students can grapple with a course’s material and, crucially, they are tools for building and making things with the data and theories and concepts and histories they are learning.

### Support available to Mindich courses

The Mindich Program's goals of civic engagement and connection "beyond the Harvard context" often lead to instructors' interest in offering students opportunities to communicate what they've learned in new media. If academic writing is the most appropriate way to communicate *within* the Harvard context, instructors have sometimes found that podcasts, websites, posters, and social media (to name only a few examples) may align well with the learning objectives of Mindich courses.

We customize our support plan to meet the needs of the instructor, but there are some services we find ourselves frequently offering to Mindich instructors.

* Consultation with faculty on assignment and activity design
* Workshops in the Learning Lab Studio on multimodal communication
* Workshops and resources on technical skills required for multimedia assignments
* Office hours and consultations for students in courses we support to support their work on multimedia assignments (akin to the Writing Center's support of academic writing)
* Support for final capstone events in the Learning Lab studio (screenings of student videos, poster sessions, presentations to community partners, etc)
* Visual documentation of all of the above if telling the story of the course is a priority for the instructors and students

## AY 22-23 LL Support for Mindich courses
### Spring 2023
* ANTHRO 1813: Science from the Arctic: Histories and Futures (Annikki Herranen-Tabibi)
* Students in this course design final reports for community-based organizations that incorporate images, infographics, and text about complex and sensitive content. We visited this class to deliver a **Graphic Design Workshop** where students learned about the importance of an intentionally designed layout and the graphic design principles that can help them design effective layouts. They also chose key portions of their reports to visualize, using arts supplies to make visual representations of their texts.
* FRSEMR 72Y: Radical Actors: The Role of Public Education in American Social Movements (Nicole Simon)
* Students in this course creating tools that can be used to teach about a chosen social movement to other students. Early in the semester, we **visited the class** to introduce students to the type of support they could receive from us as they worked on their final projects. Given the small size of the class, we were able to provide **individual student project consultations** to each student as they fleshed out their final project ideas. Later in the semester, students came to the Learning Lab for a **Final Project Workshop** where they were given individualized technical help as well as assistance refining their project plans. We then booked time in our small studio for **student project recordings**, and students could receive editing help during our **office hours**.
* PSY 980T: Eating Disorders (Rebecca Shingleton) Infographics and Graphic Design Workshop
* Students in this course design projects to disseminate nuanced information about eating disorders to the public. Students came to the Learning Lab for an **Infographics and Graphic Design Workshop** where they analyzed some examples of figures and visualizations from a scientific paper they had read in class about myths surrounding easting disorders. They then discussed the elements of those visualizations that were particularly effective and which aspects they would change. For their final activity, they thought about their own research projects and then using art supplies, they developed visualizations that they could use to convey their research findings.
* SOCIOL 1130: Student Leadership and Service in Higher Education (Manja Klemencic)
* Students in this course create a final web-based report on their work. Students came to the Learning Lab for a **Multimedia Storytelling in the Social Sciences Workshop** that helped them think about how to acquire the media assets for this over the course of their research plans, then how to mount this media on the web using various technical tools and graphic design principles.

### Fall 2022
* EXPOS 20: Animals and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
* Media & Design Fellow Ed Winters provided **a series of workshops** on leveraging social media to further political causes and activism. Students learned about how to use social media to address a public audience, how to construct effective and engaging social media content, and how to create videos that share political and social values with a broad and diverse public. Ed also **consulted with students** about their final video projects, providing them with individualized feedback about the content and form of their videos. At a capstone event, students screened their video projects before an in-person and virtual audiences, and Ed responded live to the student videos, in discussion with Professor Saha.
* HEB1200 Neanderthals and Other Extinct Humans (Bridget Alex)
* Students in this course came to the Learning Lab for two workshops as they developed their visuals and stories for their final video projects. First, a **Brainstorming Workshop** introduced students to the basics of photographing objects and storyboarding, and helped them to consider what they might want a viewer to see on screen and when. Next, students came back for a **Storyboarding Workshop** where students went further into the particulars of their video projects, crafting key visuals and "characters" for their videos. We then booked time in our small studio for **student project recordings**, and students could receive editing help during our **office hours**. Check out some of the students' final projects: 1) [It Takes a Village - Athena Ye](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8brdOsN5Z0), 2) [Could a Neanderthal be a Pop Star? - Ella Stanley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzBLNCBa2dM), and 3) [A Feast Fit for a Neanderthal - Jania Tumey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk2axv35Y6A).
* ENGLISHCACF Get Real: The Art of Community-Based Film (Musa Syeed)
* Students came to the Learning Lab space for a **hackathon** where they received help from our staff and fellows while working on their final projects.
## Mindich courses the LL has previously supported
### Spring 2022
* EXPOS 20: Animals and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
* GOV 94WP: Women in Politics (Sparsha Saha)
* SOCIOL 1130: Student Leadership and Service in Higher Education (Manja Klemencic)
### Fall 2021
* EXPOS 20: Telling Her Story: Narrative, Media, and #MeToo (AJ Gold)
* EXPOS 20: Animals and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
* SOCIOL 1163: Pursuing Truth and Justice: Principles and Methods of Equity through Inquiry (Flavia Perea)
### Spring 2021
* EXPOS 20: Animals and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
* SOCIOL 1130: Higher Ed, Scholarship and Service (Manja Klemencic)
### Fall 2020
* EXPOS 20: The 2020 Election and American Democracy (Matt Cole)
* EXPOS 20: Telling Her Story: Narrative, Media, and #MeToo (AJ Gold)
* EXPOS 20: Animals and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
### Spring 2020
* EXPOS 20: Green Spaces, Urban Places (Sarah Case)
* EXPOS 20: Telling Her Story: Narrative, Media, and #MeToo (AJ Gold)
* EXPOS 20: Sexism and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
* EXPOS 20: Ecological Crisis (Spencer Strub)
* SOCIOL 1130: Higher Ed, Scholarship and Service (Manja Klemencic)
### Fall 2019
* EXPOS 20: Democracy in Action (Matt Cole)
* EXPOS 20: Telling Her Story: Narrative, Media, and #MeToo (AJ Gold)
* EXPOS 20: Narratives of Immigration (Margaret Rennix)
* EXPOS 20: Sexism and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
### Spring 2019
* EXPOS 20: Whose Boston? (Willa Brown)
* EXPOS 20: Green Spaces, Urban Places (Sarah Case)
* EXPOS 20: Narratives of Immigration (Margaret Rennix)
* EXPOS 20: Sexism and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
* SOCIOL 1130: Higher Ed, Scholarship and Service (Manja Klemencic)
### Fall 2018
* EXPOS 20: Narratives of Immigration (Margaret Rennix)
* EXPOS 20: Sexism and Politics (Sparsha Saha)
* EXPOS 20: Ecological Crisis (Spencer Strub)
* HEB 1200 Neanderthals and Other Extinct Humans (Bridget Alex)