Gain the expertise you need to flourish at the frontiers of education — by creating innovations in education technology, leveraging the science of learning, and developing powerful pedagogies.

In our Learning Design, Innovation, and Technology (LDIT) Program, you will tackle promising and challenging frontiers of education — leveraging the science of learning, applying innovations in education technology, and developing powerful pedagogies to improve learning outcomes. You will experience a diverse, inclusive, and high-energy environment, while learning from leading HGSE faculty and top industry practitioners, as well as your fellow cohort members. Our LDIT Program will equip you to work in educational media and technology, instructional design, and curriculum development, to create new learning materials and experiences for preK–12 schools, colleges and universities, 21st century workplaces, and informal settings

After completing the LDIT Program, you will have gained a deeper understanding of core competencies that explore how to: 

• Determine learning needs and goals
• Create learning materials and experiences
• Assess impacts of a learning design
• Manage design processes, collaboratively and reflectively
• Foreground diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in design

Curriculum Information

The LDIT Program is designed to help you gain the knowledge and practice the skills essential to designing and implementing learning experiences. A minimum of 42 credits are required to graduate with an Ed.M. degree from HGSE.

The LDIT Program is designed to help you gain the knowledge and practice the skills essential to designing and implementing learning experiences. A minimum of 42 credits are required to graduate with an Ed.M. degree from HGSE.

The main elements of this academic year curriculum are:

• The Foundation courses (12 credits) — How People Learn, Evidence, Equity and Opportunity, and Leading Change — in which students gain core skills central to the profession of education.
  • This program commences with How People Learn, an immersive online course that runs June–July and requires a time commitment of 12–15 hours per week.
  • You will continue Foundations with Evidence and Equity and Opportunity on campus in August. 
  • Your Equity and Opportunity Foundations experience culminates in an elected course, which will take place during terms when electives are available.
  • The final Foundations course, Leading Change, takes place during the fall semester. 

To fulfill the program requirement, you must take a minimum of 12 credits specific to LDIT, including the following:  

• The LDIT Program Core Experience (4 credits in the fall semester), you will explore how to design learning across a wide variety of settings, from classrooms to conferences and online networks, in architecture, media, and emerging technologies. You will engage with outstanding design practitioners who are using design theory and strategies to make learning more appealing and more successful in a wide variety of settings. Across these different domains, faculty will highlight competencies that are critical tools for learning designers.
• LDIT-related course work (8 credits), you may choose from more than 30 courses taught by LDIT faculty members. Topics include deeper learning, innovation by design, learning through arts, entrepreneurship in education, learning analytics, universal design, creativity and curiosity, and many more.
• The remaining credits are taken via elective coursework, which includes the opportunity to specialize in a Concentration and to cross-register for complementary courses in other Harvard schools and at MIT.

Explore our course catalog.

Note, all information and courses are subject to change.

Tuition and Costs

Full-time $60,102

Note: Tuition and fee costs are subject to change and are determined each year.

*Request updates if tuition changes