The good news is that Harvard is beginning to play a public leadership role in increasing student learning! The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT)  had its inaugural event, a symposium, on February 3. HILT was founded as the result of a generous $40M gift from Harvard alumni Gustave and Rita Hauser. The invitation only event brought in several outside luminaries with considerable expertise in learning, such as Physics Nobel Laureate Carl Weiman, and around 300 people from the Harvard community including Harvard\'s own luminary in the field, Eric Mazur.

The poor state of undergraduate student learning over all has been chronicled in many books and studies (see an earlier discussion here).  One of the most readable of these books was written by Harvard\'s own Derek Bok - Our Underachieving Colleges, so the issues are not unfamiliar at Harvard itself. As Bok (and many others) pointed out, the problem is not that there aren\'t many well documented ways to greatly increase student learning, it is that these methods have not been adopted widely by colleges. The powerful forces of the status quo have dominated teaching and learning.  

Harvard\'s Clayton Christensen (also at the symposium) and BYU-Idaho\'s Henry Eyring (CE) recently published The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education from the Inside Out. In it, they focused on the development of Harvard over the centuries to show how the evolution of colleges from small local entities to huge research universities produced changes both positive and negative for society and the students themselves. Among the changes was that student learning played a ever decreasing role in the reward systems of the institutions. Thus, the learning (or lack-of-learning) results described by Bok and others becomes an understandable outcome of the growth of the research university.

CE argue that most institutions are, at their own level, seeking to emulate Harvard in ways that they can. While CE\'s focus on the uniqueness of Harvard as a role model might be considered to be a bit overdone, it is nevertheless true that the research universities are at the very pinnacle of the higher education prestige ladder, and of course, Harvard is certainly to be found in the very top echelon of the research universities. It is not unexpected that many, if not most, institutions have an understandable desire to move up the prestige ladder, thus, indeed, becoming more "Harvard-like".

So Harvard is certainly a very visible, very important role model in higher education. While it cannot dictate change in higher education, it certainly provides a fantastic bully pulpit from which to promote an important point of view.  And significantly increasing student learning is of critical importance in this time of globalization and change. Thus the "better learning" movement has to cheer the appearance of Harvard on the stage with HILT. 

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND:

There is a downside, however. As CE argue, teaching and research actually are carried out following very different business models.  Research shows that organizations that run multiple business models simultaneously incur very significant overhead due to the complexity of balancing those models. CE argue that much of the high cost of higher education can be traced to the multiple-business-model nature of the business, and the resulting high overhead. 

More negative than the high cost, in many ways, is the reality that if multiple business models are carried out together, the resulting constraints imply that no one of the business models can be optimized.  In the research university (e.g. Harvard), the research business model is optimized as much as possible within the constraints, meaning that the teaching business model is greatly suboptimized. Or to put it into a more concrete articulation, for a faculty member, doing research conflicts with teaching, and the system rewards doing research most highly. Thus teaching (and learning) will naturally suffer, and this will be particularly so if doing teaching more effectively requires that the faculty member consecrate additional time and energy to learning a new field (pedagogy).  

So this new Initiative suggests increasing the optimization of the teaching component somewhat - which almost certainly will decrease the optimization of the research component.  At the simplest level, if the faculty member spends more time and effort on teaching, less will be spent on research. Some faculty will undoubtedly suggest that they can maintain research levels if they have lowered teaching loads reflecting the additional time requirements for learning new approaches (which are often more challenging for the professor than the old, if truth be told). This will mean that cost/student for the students they teach will go up, thus increasing upward pressure on tuition - another no-no. Former Tufts President and now member of the Harvard Corporation Lawrence Bacow summarized this box well at the symposium:

All ways of improving the teaching/learning environment will only add costs to our system. That can’t go on forever. These things come to an end and usually it’s not pretty.

It may well be that Harvard is rich enough to find a way to thread this needle - maintain  its high research profile, increase learning outcomes, and control costs - without making any major changes in approach. But for most institutions, this needle will only be threaded through major changes that address the very high costs of the multiple simultaneous business models and the current lack of significant economies of scale. 

So the danger is that Harvard is taking up a leadership role in increasing learning - and offering a model that only it can afford.

International co-ordinators and your mentor teacher will assist you in finding the most suitable place and time for your exhange period. In addition to studying abroad, you also have the chance of compeleting your professional training and your bachelor`s thesis abroad.

It is essential to plan your exchange abroad well in advance to make the best of it. Premiliminary information will be given to you at the beginning of your studies as you plan your personal study plan. Remember, YOU are in charge of making your life extraordinary. 

It is admission time. Here is a

list of universities

across India

that offer courses in

Engineering, Management

and more.

Anna University Distance Education -

MBA, MCA and MSC

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

General Management,

Technology Management,

Financial Services Management,

Retail Management,

Health Services Management,

Human Resources Management
.

Eligibility: A pass in any bachelor degree

(the degree must have been obtained

under 10+2+3 pattern), a pass in the

distance education entrance test (DEET)

conducted by Anna university. Chennai.

Master of Computer Applications (MCA)

Eligibility: A pass in any bachelor\'s degree.

The candidates should have

studied Core Mathematics either at

+2 level or Mathematics/

Statistics/Computer oriented subject as

one of the subjects at the

degree level and a pass in the distance

education entrance test (DEET)

conducted by Anna university Chennai.

Master of Science (MSc) Information Technology

Eligibility: A pass in B.Sc

(Mathematics/ Computer Science/

Information Technology/

Software Engineering/Electronics)

or B.Sc (Physics/Statistics/ Chemistry)

or B.Sc with Mathematics or

Computer Science as allied subject

or B.Sc applied sciences

(Computer technology/

Information technology/

Computer systems

maintenance and networking)

or BCA or B.E./B.Tech any

branch and a pass in the

distance education entrance test (DEET)

conducted by Anna university, Chennai.

Application forms
_________________
Application forms can be

obtained in person from

study centres or downloaded from

http://www.annauniv.edu/index.php

Completed application forms

(with a Demand Draft of Rs 700

drawn in favour of The Director,

Centre for Distance Education,

Anna university)

can be send to:

Centre for Distance Education, Anna university,

Chennai-600025. Those

submitting applications in

person get the Hall Ticket on the same day.

Application forms are available at:
Chennai (Centre for distance education,

Tel 044-22357216)
Madurai (KLN College of Education,

Tel 0452-2698280)
Trichy (Jamal Mohammed College,

Tel 0431-2331015)
Vellore (Pentech Computer Education,

Tel 0416-3207666)

Important dates
_______________
18.06.2010 - Last date of

application form issue
02.07.2010 - Last date

of receipt of applications
25.07.2010 -

Entrance test MBA, MCA and M.Sc

Contact
_______
Tel 044-22357216/20/21/22/23/24
Email distanceprog@annauniv.edu

You’re at the front lines shooting Nazis before they shoot you. Or, you’re a futuristic gladiator in a death match with robots. Either way, you’re playing a video game—and you might be improving your vision and other brain functions, according to research presented May 27 at a New York University conference on games as a learning tool.

ll 30 students of Super 30, a free coaching centre in Bihar, have cracked the highly competitive Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) for the third consecutive year, the institute announced Wednesday.

"We are really upbeat and celebrating the 100 per cent success for the third consecutive year as all 30 students have cracked the IIT-JEE this year," Anand Kumar, the institute\'s director-cum-founder, said.    

Super 30 that helps economically backward students crack the IIT-JEE has been selected by the Time magazine in the list of The Best of Asia 2010.    

The magazine, in its latest issue, said that every year, about 230,000 students take the exam for a seat in the IITs but only 5,000 grab it.    

"Last year, 30 of them came from one coaching centre in Patna, capital of the impoverished north Indian state of Bihar. That may not seem like many, but for the Super 30 centre it\'s a pass rate of 100 percent," it said.   

Mohammad Sadab Azam, a student of Super 30, said: "Thanks to Super 30, I cracked the IIT-JEE. Everyone is in a celebratory mood. We are happy."   

Azam, whose father works as a labourer in a village in Gaya district, said that he had never dreamt of cracking the prestigious exam.   

"It was all because of Super 30," he said.    

Anup Kumar, another Super 30 student, said the facilities and encouragement from the faculty made it possible for him to crack the tough exam.   

The institute selects talented students from poor families and provides them with free coaching, food and accommodation.   

According to Anand, "Hard work, proper guidance and supervision are the secrets of our success."   
"We were sure that the results would be positive as we teach them to eat, sleep, walk and talk only IIT," he said.   

In 2003, the first year of the institute, 18 students made it to the IITs. The number rose to 22 in 2004 and to 26 in 2005. In 2007 and 2006, 28 students made it through ITT-JEE. In 2008, for the first time 30 students cracked the IIT-JEE followed by 2009.   

Anand said the institute is supported by the income generated from his Ramanujam School of Mathematics, which has students who can afford to pay fees.   

The Super 30 was started by Anand along with Bihar\'s Additional Director General of Police Abhyanand. But two years ago Abhyanand dissociated himself from the institute.   

The success story of Super 30 was telecast by the Discovery Channel last year.   

"Super 30 is an amazing initiative and it needs to be taken to maximum people around the globe," said Christopher Mitchell, whose film for Discovery also bagged the Audience Choice Award at the sixth Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.   

Three years ago, Norika Fujiwara, a former Japanese beauty queen and actress, made a documentary film on Super 30 for its innovative and successful attempt to send poor children to India\'s top engineering colleges.