Invisible Learning: The magic behind Dan Levy's legendary Harvard statistics course

by David Franklin

Invisible Learning reveals the secrets behind one of Harvard’s most successful statistics courses. Dan Levy is famous at Harvard for his inclusive learning environment, which leaves students feeling not just confident about using statistics in the real world, but also seen, heard and loved. Written from the perspective of the student, the book is a fly-on-the-wall case study of the course. It argues that the learning environment is composed of invisible bonds between students and teacher, and considers how he strengthens those bonds and uses them to maximise learning. It seeks to answer the question, asked by students and Harvard faculty “How does he do it?” --- "For over fifteen years, my former co-author and colleague Dan Levy has been teaching statistics successfully at the Harvard Kennedy School. In these challenging times, it is more important than ever that change-makers understand both the opportunities, and the limitations, of the data they rely on. Now, thanks to David Franklin's remarkable book, anyone can be a fly on the wall in the class that persuaded generations of future leaders to love statistics." - Michael Kremer, Winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics and Professor at the University of Chicago "In my 11-year tenure as the Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, I heard so frequently from faculty and students alike about the extraordinary teaching that Dan Levy consistently did that I asked him to lead a major new teaching initiative for the entire school. This wonderful new book by David Franklin reveals the magic behind his class. I was transfixed. I knew Dan and his collaborators were good, I just did not know they were THIS good. If you want to understand what propels spectacular teaching, read this book. If you want to understand how and why statistics matters to us all, read this book. And good gracious, if you are ever expected to teach or learn statistics at any level, devour this book." - David Ellwood, Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School (2004-15) and advisor to President Bill Clinton "In nearly 20 years working with Harvard faculty to advance effective teaching, I have never had the pleasure to work with a more dedicated and effective educator than Dan Levy. While it may be tempting to assume that Dan was simply born a great teacher, the truth is that teaching is a skill that must be learned. Dan’s open-mindedness and dedication to continuous improvement keep him fresh and engaged, and judging by the student evaluations of his teaching, he’s a stand-out success year after year. The lessons in this book from Dan’s thoughtful, creative, and collaborative approach to teaching should be required reading for educators everywhere. - Carolyn Wood, Director of Educational Quality Improvement at Harvard Medical School "In my 37 years of teaching leadership at Harvard, I have used student cases and the dynamics inside the classroom as a living set of cases from which to examine properties of leadership, authority, and collective problem-solving. In this book, David Franklin deftly uses leadership frameworks to analyze what happens in a very different kind of API-209, an extraordinary statistics course taught for many years by my colleague Dan Levy at the Harvard Kennedy School. If you are interested in discovering how to the design and deliver courses that aim to generate collective responsibility and collaborative learning, I highly recommend you read this book." - Ron Heifetz, Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of Leadership Without Easy Answers “Being a student in the class that inspired this book and an enthusiast of teaching and learning, I was delighted to learn that David wrote this book.

Genres: Education, Science, Mathematics

328 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 26, 2020

About the author

David Franklin is an art historian with expertise in Italian Renaissance art, a curator, and a former art museum director.

Reviews

[Vicky Thrasher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up fairly randomly from a used book store but am quite pleased I did. The information is well structured so the reader almost feels they are a student in the class and are better able to empathize with the class. After reading this, I really wish more of my professors/teachers would have shared more about how they evaluate how a class is going so I could better implicitly inform them about how I was feeling. Even though I am not a teacher, I am hoping I can still use the information in helping me be a successful leader and mentor on my work teams.

The only reason I gave this 4 stars instead of 5 is because I felt like David should have applied more of the practices he was explaining directly to the book, since he is effectively teaching the reader about them (it would have been really interesting to also see these practices implemented only after they were explained). For example, after David mentions Dan's use of images to lock in certain concepts, I would have loved to see more images in the book to lock in David's concepts.

[Wiebke Kuhn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Effective text that not only describes how this particular class is taught, so that I was able to (re)learn some statistics, but also describes the work that goes into creating this kind of intense, deeply caring that Levy uses to create his inclusive and challenging learning environment. Most interesting for me was the connection to the leadership theory.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating look at pedagogy and statistics from a top-rated Harvard course.