Jul 24, 2013 - Students learning through development of online materials for users off campus (like the AP calculus and
July 24, 2013
The Andover Institute for Innovation: Concept Note Phillips Academy has a long history of innovation in teaching and learning at the secondary school level. PA faculty and administrators played key roles in introducing the Advanced Placement courses and exams, School Year Abroad, and Outward Bound in the United States. The teaching methods and materials developed at PA have been models for learning environments around the world. As dramatic new opportunities for teaching and learning emerge, PA seeks to cultivate innovation through the establishment of the Andover Institute. This start-up incubator within our 235-year-old academy would be a place at the heart of PA where faculty, students, staff, and visitors can come together to dream up and experiment with new modes of teaching and learning and, together, can bring the best of them to fruition. New ideas that work need a pathway at Phillips Academy to find their way into common practice or be abandoned, with lessons learned documented along the way. A key function of the Andover Institute will be to assess the effectiveness of new or existing modes of teaching and learning and to share our findings. Everyone involved in the Andover Institute will be part of turning ideas into action; how to scale something for greater impact as it succeeds; and how to fail gracefully and learn from our mistakes. At the outset, the Andover Institute will have three areas of focus: 1. Innovations in Outreach, building upon the work of our existing outreach programs and museums, where those ideas might be scalable; 2. Global Citizenship, building on the work of the Global Perspectives Group; 3. Connected Learning, building on today’s teaching and learning at Andover. The three areas of focus above are NOT intended to be permanent or exhaustive and we anticipate considering other areas for innovation later including varied topics related to human rights. Most recently, there has been a great deal of specific conversation around gender on campus. At a May faculty meeting, an impressive group of students shared a number of observations about campus issues that have gender components, from recent conversations about the leadership of women and girls, to students’ concerns about sexual behavior of their peers. The Brace Center for Gender Studies, long a central node for gender studies and a home for interested scholars and students, remains a deeply respected institution on campus and will play an especially important role this year as we mark 40 years of co-education at Andover. Working closely together, the existing Brace Center and the Andover Institute will explore areas of intersection and collaboration. Faculty members will surely have other ideas for how the Institute could explore and support new and innovative work in other areas as well. Seed funding for the Andover Institute is already in place thanks to generous gifts to the Academy from a few Trustees and one additional family for the purpose of getting the initiative going. This seed funding will enable a small core team of teachers and a coordinating director to come together for pre-launch activities in 2013-2014, housed in Pearson C. The Director of the Andover Institute role will be administrative and the opening will be posted immediately. The initial core team will plan the Andover Institute’s modes of operation, further develop our areas of focus, and recruit additional team members and partners, including existing PA faculty, staff, and students to participate in start-up activities. The primary idea for staffing the Institute is to have rotating Faculty Fellow positions that would enable current faculty release time to work on specific innovative teaching and learning projects that could then be translated back
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into classroom use. Presuming that the “quiet phase” is successful and additional funding is raised for the Faculty Fellow positions, the Andover Institute would be launched officially in Fall 2014. Applications and selection of Faculty Fellows would be on an annual basis, likely in parallel with the current sabbatical and leave application schedule.
Areas of Initial Focus The Andover Institute will work closely with the Academic Council as it begins with three foci in the 2013-2014 planning phase. These areas are subject to refinement, replacement, and change -- during the planning process and in the future. (1) Expanding Outreach The Andover Institute will embrace the idea of outreach beyond Andover as an initial area of focus. The Academy has received a generous gift from Jay Precourt and Oscar Tang to fund the Precourt Director for Innovation in Outreach. The job description for this administrative faculty role has not yet been finalized and will not be advertised until a later date. The Precourt Director will work initially within the Institute and closely with the Director of the Andover Institute, faculty, and students on exploring ways to accomplish scaling of good ideas generated at Andover. The job would not be focused on “running” the existing outreach programs, but rather, the Precourt Director would collaborate with Ferd Alonso, the Director of Outreach and Summer Session, program directors, museums, library, and others, to explore areas for future partnerships and network development. The mini-conference hosted on campus this past spring by (MS)2 for similar programs including (HS)2, SMASH, and others, is but one example and others are included below. (2) Global Citizenship: Community-based and Off-Campus Learning This has long been a deep area of interest for Andover faculty, with research, travel, and professional development opportunities in diverse parts of the world. Led most recently by Temba Maqubela, Peter Merrill (interim GPG coordinator), Susanne Torabi (travel coordinator) and the Global Perspectives Group (GPG), these activities will now move into the Institute with the GPG and experiential learning group as advisors. This will help us envision and shape the future of off-campus learning programs including existing and emerging partnerships with institutions in China (environment), South Africa (arts), Brazil (education/biodiversity) and India (education) as well as opportunities for experiential and interdisciplinary learning closer to Andover. (A summary of Andover’s 2013-2014 off-campus learning programs linked to the Institute can be seen here.) Andover has a tremendous body of work/experience to build on. There is a need, however, to synthesize the existing processes into the deeper mission of the school, to expand the existing vision, and implement it coherently into curricular activities, programmatic offerings and daily lives of students and teachers. This work of synthesizing and integrating our off-campus learning programs will be an important early part of the Institute’s work. (3) Connected Learning: Technology, Teaching and Learning Initiative Areas for Research and Exploration: • Look at various relevant models (e.g. Online School for Girls, Global Online Academy, Stanford University Online High School, Khan Academy)
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Currently there’s a great deal of emphasis/investment in experiments aimed at higher education (e.g. EdX, Coursera, etc.), less has been explored around what opportunities there may be to leverage and build programs for secondary schools. Are there opportunities to partner with higher ed experiments in this space? What can we learn from our peer schools and are there opportunities for collaboration in the online space with other independent schools?
Establish a “lab space” in which to engage students and faculty in experimental and experiential learning and innovative creation with new tools, online environments, etc. • Enable faculty and students to test out tools, evaluate them, bring them into the classroom • Foster student-driven experimentation, play with tools, roadtest, evaluate, kick around • Engage external partners (e.g. engineers from the MIT Media Lab, developer pals, entrepreneurs, interested alumni as mentors and collaborators). As part of the start-up phase, Vic Svec, Chris Odden, Jacques Hugon and others have or will soon begin projects related to this area of inquiry and will continue that work this coming year through the Institute as a trial run. Immediate projects include: • • • •
a 26-section iPad pilot that includes 17 teachers across 8 departments; Jacques Hugon has developed and is working to improve an online math placement exam; Students learning through development of online materials for users off campus (like the AP calculus and chemistry projects with Khan Academy); Chris Odden will be the school’s first Distance Learning Scholar and will develop an online BC calculus course for (MS)2 and Lawrence High School students. The purpose of this course is to enable (MS)2 and interested LHS students to take an Andover-developed BC calculus course during their ordinary school year guided by a PA teacher. Current students will pilot the materials and also be able to use them in their on campus courses.
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