Teaching & Learning Decoded

At Harvard, we have VPAL.

At MIT, they have ODL.

At Stanford, they had VPOL which will soon be renamed and reorganized into VPTL (pronounced, um …). And, likewise, MIT's ODL does way more than just digital---and is going through a re-org of its own. In all three cases, the units contain other units or initiatives (such as HarvardX, MITx, and Stanford Online Learning.)

In the MOOC-, now post-MOOC era, those in academe might be tiring of the New Deal like verbal menagerie emerging around them. Extended one step further … "Greetings Courserian"; "Hello Udacian"; or "Hey edX-er" (participants from online providers Coursera, Udacity and edX, respectively) was a shark jumping moment.

Universities do like, and have long liked, their acronyms. Harvard, in fact, has its own language (and decoder ring: http://www.harvard.edu/faqs/acronyms). To this day, despite being here for more than a decade, I often say "major" rather than "concentration" and have no idea how to pronounce HGSE or GSAS.

Rarely, however, do acronyms across universities align, or suggest a deeper meaning. An by that, I do not mean the now ubiquitous interloper, "MOOC."

You may have already figured out the shared element among the efforts at Harvard, MIT, and Stanford: it's the "L"---for learning.

What further bonds VPAL/VPOL/VPTL/ODL is that while MOOCs/online learning may have been the force that necessitated these newer or realigned efforts, traditional teaching and learning anchors them. That may come as a surprise, or a relief, to many who worried about the potential implications of learning at scale or non-classroom based instruction.

As Harvard Provost Alan Garber said upon the formation of the Office of the Vice Provost for Learning (VPAL): “Part of the thinking behind this position is that we have a number of activities whose common goal is to improve learning and teaching by various techniques and various approaches. From the beginning, we thought that HarvardX is not really about technology. It’s about making the best use of technology to achieve goals that we’ve always had—to improve learning and teaching.”

Thus, if you forget what the letters of these umbrella organizations stand for (and "you have a pal in VPAL" doesn't help as a mnemonic trick), know that "improving teaching and learning" is at their hearts, and that is likely the only decoding that one needs.