Danforth Grant Is Sponsoring Teaching Evalation Programs

A $200,000 grant from the Danforth Foundation is currently being used to fund experiments in innovative education, Dean K. Whitla, executive director of the program and director of the Office of Instructional Research and Development, said yesterday.

The grant, given to Harvard last December, supports the Center for Teaching, a program designed to help graduate teaching fellows improve the quality of their teaching.

Groups of teaching assistants from different departments receive "minigrants" from the program, Whitla said, which are used to evaluate teaching methods.

Among the groups that have taken advantage of the Danforth money are teaching fellows from the History Department, Economics 10, and the Romance Languages.

The major program being sponsored by the Center this year is widespread videotaping of Expository Writing classes, Whitla said.

The center's administrative board will meet this Monday to prepare a statement on the future direction of the program, which will be presented to a full faculty meeting later this month.

Sherry Morgan, senior adviser in the Union dorms and a participant in one of the earliest evaluation groups this summer, said yesterday that her group, composed of 15 graduate students in various stages of their teaching career, met with Whitla and President Bok under the auspices of the Danforth program.

Morgan, a graduate student in psychology, said that everyone in the group agreed that the increased availability of videotaping programs would be extremely useful in setting up evaluations in the departments.

Morgan said teachers and students often find videotapes "fairly astounding" because they are so different from what they expect to see.