While the College already offers a few “less-than half” courses, Harris said the way the course catalogue is currently configured makes it difficult for the College to track these alternative courses.
Many FAS professors said that they viewed the proposal favorably, arguing that students may have a wider and more flexible variety of courses to explore.
“I think from the point of view from our concentration in engineering, this will provide a lot of very useful flexibility,” said Robert D. Howe, the Director of Undergraduate Studies for Biomedical Engineering. “We are forced to try to lump together labs with classes, and sometimes that works well, but with other fields it doesn’t always work.”
Howe noted that if labs could count as a separate class rather than being attached to regular lectures or sections, students may be able to choose labs that are more tailored toward their interests.
“The benefit is that we can sort things out into nicer, more logical pieces,” Howe said.
However, Howe warned against increasing the amount of work students would be expected to complete under this new system.
“Every time you have a new class, there’s another layer of overhead,” he said. “It’s one more place you have to go at regular time every week, so we have to be careful that in splitting things up into nice digestible pieces, we don't increase the workload for both faculty and students.”
Lewis, who is a professor of computer science, added, “Certainly, we here in computer science and engineering can think of ways to be creative with these courses.”
Though both Burke and Harris emphasized that there would be no curricular or pedagogical change for undergraduates, they noted that administrative processes would be made easier, especially with the launch of the Student Information System, which will allow students from across all 12 Harvard schools to complete tasks ranging from study card submissions to billing payments all on one online platform.
Harris said that the Student Information System will come “ready made” for the course credit system.
—Staff writer Meg P. Bernhard can be reached at meg.bernhard@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @Meg_Bernhard.