Word: krupnick
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Katherine Krupnick, director of the video program, says the experience of seeing oneself on videotape for the first time can be traumatic--people look older and fatter and their voices sound funny. Krupnick, who has been largely responsible for developing the center's video techniques, has learned not to let someone sit alone while watching a tape of himself. "It's like standing and looking at yourself in the mirror for an hour. It's very distracting. It is helpful to be able to turn around to someone and ask a question or try to sort out your thoughts...
...after the initial feelings of strangeness wear off, many people spot their own teaching flaws and come up with ideas to correct them, Krupnick says. Teachers who change their style often immediately evoke favorable reactions in their students, or receive better ratings on student questionnaires. One teacher who came to the center to brush up on his lecture style before accepting a prestigious teaching post at another university received substantial criticism from evaluators of one of his taped lectures. Nevertheless, he decided not to make any changes in his technique, and soon after he began his new job students dropped...
...center does good work--but does it do enough good work? Virtually the only program at Harvard seeking to improve teaching skills, the center has been called a mere token, something Harvard can proudly point to when critics accuse her of harboring a single-minded passion for research. Krupnick explains that the center is small because administrators were initially skeptical about the experiment. "They were waiting to see if it would just be a trendy thing that would fall on its face," she says...
Since its birth the center has taped hundreds of teachers; most, however, are graduate students and non-student teaching assistants. Some junior faculty agree to be taped, but Krupnick can only recall about five to eight senior faculty members who requested the center's services. Some departments--Economics and Romance Languages, for example--require all teaching fellows to be taped, but most of the taping participants come voluntarily. Whitla says, "Most of the people we see tend to be above average teachers already. They are highly motivated. Perhaps we ought to be working with a group that is not quite...
...Krupnick has often heard about the alleged trade-off between teaching and research ability, but does not believe in it, although Harvard seems to value research over teaching. "Research gives life to the University," she says. "Research grants create an intellectual atmosphere and bring new fun's in. Good teachers create an intellectual atmosphere too, but they don't bring new funds in." Krupnick finds, however, that belief in the tradeoff is disappearing as good teaching ability looms larger as a criterion for employment at many universities, if not at Harvard. Besides, Krupnick says, people here value teaching ability more...