Class Video Access Limited

Harvard students often assume large lecture courses are all videotaped to allow them to keep up with the class even if they can't attend on a particular day.

The lectures for Literature and Arts B-10, "Art and Visual Culture: Introduction to the Historical Study of Art and Architecture," are all videotaped. But the tapes are available to only one of the 297 students enrolled in the core course.

This student was given privileged access because of "medical needs," said Professor of Fine Arts Irene J. Winter.

"We're trying to compensate for someone's disability--not to help one person over another, but to help one person catch up with the other people," said Jack Cheng, a teaching fellow for the course.

At least two courses in addition to B-10 have lectures videotaped only for students with special needs, said Amy J. Thompson, manager of the Audio-Visual department of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Several students in B-10 have asked their teaching fellows for permission to view the tapes--and have been denied access, said head teaching fellow Greg Thomas.

"I think that students, if they want to see the tape and it exists, should be able to see the tape," said Shivashish Chatterjee '95, a student in the course.

But Cheng said viewing tapes of lectures was not "part of the deal" for B-10.

"We don't want the tapes to become a good reason for not coming to class," Winter said. "The dynamic of what goes on in [lecture] is as much a part of learning as the reading in the sections."

All students were allowed to watch tapes of the first two lectures, when Sackler auditorium was so full that some students had to listen from outside, said Joel O. Ying '95, another student in the course.

Winter said there is no way to provide equal access to the videotapes for all students in the course because the facilities where students can view videotaped lectures are "not set up for large access."

But many courses with high enrollment, including Social Analysis 10, Physics 11, and Science B-15, tape lectures regularly and allow all enrolled students to view the tapes.

Arrangements for viewing lecture tapes vary from course to course and are made at the discretion of the instructors, Thompson said.

Some students said the decision on whether or not to videotape should be left to the professors.

"It's their decision," Christopher J. Exner '95 said. "I don't think they should be under obligation to tape the class."