Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Students Prefer Intensive Courses
Inside Higher Ed: "As for-profit higher education has attracted more students, many in nonprofit higher education have wondered about which qualities of the for-profit sector are worth considering for adoption and which aren’t. That was part of the impetus for a study conducted at the University of Texas at Austin on how students respond to “intensive” courses – those taught on a tighter than normal schedule, with more class time each week, but fewer weeks. Such courses are common in for-profit higher education and online higher education, but are far less common at traditional, residential institutions."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I definitely agree with the findings of this study. I feel like it's hard to stay excited and work effectively even in the most interesting course when the work is really spread out. I would much rather have short, intensive bursts in a specific course. It would keep the students' attention and my interest better, allow students to get closer to the other students and teacher more quickly, and I think they would be learning the material in a more permanent way. I found this to be true in high school with block-schedule courses, where a year would be condensed into a semester, and I don't see why it should be different at university.
This is surprising to me. I would think it would be good to have more spread out classes with the same work. I guess if you get in the mode to do something you are ready to do it constantly as apposed to having it spread out over time. Maybe at CMU they should put all of our breaks/days off during winter break and have short intense class sections before and after winter break.
I think the idea here is about pace. It's less about the length of the semester than the overall speed of the class. I don't mind long semesters or week-long breaks as long as class time keeps me interested in the subject. Less focused classes tend to lose priority in my mind over highly intensive ones.
Post a Comment