three 50 min classes for 15 weeks of classes
three 50 min classes for 14 weeks of classes
three 60 min classes for 14 weeks of classes
two 75 min classes for 15 weeks of classes
two 75 min classes for 14 weeks of classes
two 90 min classes for 14 weeks of classes
one three-hour class for 15 weeks of classes
one three-hour class for 14 weeks of classes
Currently, I'm teaching a "workshop-style" course that has three meetings
of 1 hr 50 min per week.
Administrators seem to feel that the only thing that matters in
instruction is the number of minutes the students spend in class. My
own anecdotal experience has been that for a lecture-style course,
three 50 minute meetings per week is more productive than two longer
meetings. The students seem to become saturated after about 50 minutes,
and with longer meetings part of each class is taken up with repeating
what was done near the end of the previous class. With shorter classes
there is less "stuff" to digest and more time to digest it. The least
successful classes I've taught have been the ones with a single 3-hour
meeting per week.
Incidentally, I remember back in the days when I used to teach during
summer sessions, the administrators cut the class length to 2/3 of the
corresponding time during the academic year. I guess they believe that
students learn faster at high temperature.
Steve Luzader
Frostburg State University
sluzader@fre.fsu.umd.edu