Note from Vice Provost Bol: Digital Learning Portal

Colleagues,

I wanted to let you know about the development of the first phase of a University-wide digital learning portal (DLP).

Created under the auspices of the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, the aim is to provide a gateway for the public to gain access to Harvard’s extensive digital learning resources (full details appear below).

The high quality of educational materials produced by faculty and schools from across campus has increased demand and interest for Harvard learning content.

Currently, Harvard’s offerings are spread across a diffuse digital space including HarvardX/edX, the graduate schools, the Division of Continuing Education, iTunes University, and Harvard’s SoundCloud and YouTube channels. The goal of this first phase of the portal is to integrate resources in one location so that users can easily search and navigate content and be just one click away from the learning experience.

This project will also offer opportunities for learning content producers around the University to feature their content, driving traffic to School-based learning assets.

The core team for the DLP is comprised of members from Harvard Public Affairs and Communications, HarvardX, and DCE. The soft launch is planned for Summer 2014.

In the coming weeks and months, the team will engage key stakeholders from across campus. If you have any initial questions, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to reach out to Michael Rutter, Director of Communications for HarvardX (michael_rutter@harvard.edu).

Regards,

Peter Bol

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Additional Information about the DLP

The portal will:

  • demonstrate Harvard’s increasingly multi-platform/technologies approach to digital learning and knowledge dissemination;
    • i.e. HarvardX, DCE’s online offerings, executive education programs, HBX, and HarvardX for Alumni
    • illustrate Harvard’s commitment to improving learning outcomes on campus and beyond by advancing teaching and learning through data-driven research and analytics;
    • reflect Harvard’s accessibility and commitment to expanding global access to knowledge (with a focus on open -- and in some cases free -- resources);
      • currently, HarvardX courses are free and open; even as monetization occurs in the future, large selections of content and courses will be remain available to learners at no or minimal cost;
      • be attractive, with well curated content and easy navigation and search;
      • allow learners worldwide to find content that is not prominent now, allowing access to a quality, effective, One Harvard experience;
      • increase traffic to other platforms (such as edX and HarvardX) and allow people to move along a continuum of free to fee-based content;
      • place users one click away from the learning experience;
      • retire obsolete sites/tools;
      • in time, create a back-end for schools to submit their content for inclusion on the site. Once submitted, this content will go through an approval process (criteria TBD) before being published. 

We look forward to seeing and engaging with you in this new space! 

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