When creating an online course, instructors tend to draw on their experience in on-campus courses. On line courses, in turn, can inspire changes to on-campus teaching. As further iterations of a course are developed, this creates an ongoing process of give and take where online and on-campus courses continue to motivate instructors to break new ground and optimize their methodology in both forums. This talk discusses the give and take that occurred over two iterations of the online and on-campus versions of the general education course Science and Cooking at Harvard. Science and Cooking aims to teach basic chemistry and physics through food and cooking. It annually draws several hundred on-campus students and was recently converted to an online course on the edx platform with more than 100,000 registrants. The talk will be an exploration of the different iterations of the course development process, including practical examples, successes, challenges, and research findings from both the on-campus and online courses – as well as a few, sometimes, surprising outcomes.

Online-on campus dialogue: Lessons from Harvard’s Science and Cooking course

249th National Meeting (2015)

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