Pedagogical Improvement

"To consider how the learning environment can be improved. To review new techniques of teaching..."

Wilga M. Rivers, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and chairman of the task force, says she doesn't think the job of her task force is to create new teaching philosophies and schemas, explaining that "the fantastic things you come up with, like Space Odyssey 1999, you can be sure will be voted down and sit on the top shelf in the archives." Rivers says she prefers to "move from where you are" and to work in sync with what will be accepted.

Given this pragmatic approach, the force is working to uncover new techniques that will improve teaching quality and to develop a system to evaluated teaching ability. Although the group has yet to agree on specific recommendations, one member recently said that, most likely, three proposals will surface later this month: that a "good" evaluation of teaching be utilized; that a person be hired in each department, on the merit of his or her teaching ability, to oversee pedagogy in his field; and, that teaching facilities be made available to assist sectionmen in improving their abilities.

But the committee member emphasizes the main thrust will probably be toward changing attitudes among Faculty members that tend to de-emphasize teaching. Whether through money incentives or mandatory classes, the member said, somehow professors must "be taught" the importance of teaching.

Still, as a student member of the committee who is now frustrated by its work says, the task force's goal is a bit intangible.

Concentrations

"To review the role of concentrations in the curriculum and define their educational purpose."

After a semester of weekly meetings and research, the task force on concentrations has moved into final debate on such questions as the fate of elite majors and the shape of the general guidelines the panel will recommend for concentrations. While the task force will not take on the Faculty establishment by proposing the abolition of concentrations and a return to the pre-Redbook electives system, it will inevitably encroach on the traditionally autonomous Harvard departments.

Such trespass will probably be minor in the concentration guidelines, according to Chairman Paul C. Martin '52, chairman of the Physics Department. But the panel could conceivably suggest opening up the limited concentrations, a move that would be resisted by some if not all of the elites. History and Literature, for one, has already testified before the task force against a change, arguing, according to one task force member, with a certain "historical pomposity" that the concentration was the first elite and that it should therefore be left intact.

On the nitty gritty level, the task force has already moved to request revisions in the descriptions of concentrations in Rules Relating. This would hopefully, Martin says, put freshmen in a better position to assess how much individual attention they are likely to receive in each department. The task force will also consider how to establish means of evaluating departments.

Martin, who admitted half-seriously in an interview last week that part of the panel's job is to make any radical proposals look less radical, believes it is important for Harvard departments to "recognize that the number who will replicate us [as university faculty] is much smaller than in the past." The task force, then, is aiming to see how concentrations could be designed to "develop skills that are transferrable and aren't as evanescent as a particular set of facts or subject matter," Martin said.

Educational Resources

"To determine the teaching resources available to the Faculty. To study how existing resources can be best utilized..."

With the Faculty absorbed in Cost Consciousness III, this task force could prove to be the prime determinant of whether the proposals of the other task forces can be put into effect. It, to be blunt, is dealing with bucks-and-brains allocation. But the committee has made little headway, with its meetings about every month confined to discussions of what data should collected. The task force has as yet made few or no moves to set up a system for evaluating the relative merit of various ways of allocating teaching resources.