Sharing Courses, Faculty, and Resources across Universities: An Argument for Cross-Institution Courses and Localized Support Structures

We present the results of multi-year collaborations among Harvard University, Yale University, and Miami Dade College in which students on all three campuses took the same introductory course in computer science. We present our respective motivations therefor and discuss how the course, CS50, has been both adopted and adapted for localized needs and constraints. Faculty at Harvard provided the course's lectures on video as well as assignments, while faculty at Yale and Miami Dade provided localized support structures, including sections (i.e., recitations) and office hours, with faculty oversight. We argue that this sharing of resources should become more common across otherwise independent campuses so that faculty on each can focus their most precious resource, time, on their own students as well as on other academic pursuits. We offer reassurance that these collaborations have not led to a reduction of resources on any of our campuses. We propose how other institutions could collaborate similarly in ways that benefit all parties. We argue that COVID-19, all things considered, was a missed opportunity for universities to lean on each other at scale, too. And we reserve much of the panel's time for discussion of attendees' perspectives, questions, and concerns.