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Re: [Phys-l] trimester course set-up



I have been teaching long enough that I have gone from semesters to
quarters and back to semesters again. There were even a few years of
systems with an "interterm" month stuck in the middle, and a couple
years with a one-month term stuck on the end.

Unless the administration is seeking a complete revamping of courses,
one goal of a calendar switch ought to be minimal educational detriment
to traditional courses. Of course the administrators pushing for the
change will try to tell you the goal is not only to avoid detrimental
effects, but indeed is being done to provide beneficial educational
effects. That is rarely the truth. The typical goal is a perceived
ease in scheduling, or grading, or billing, or some other goal that has
little to do with education.

Most of the courses I teach are year-long courses. If you switch from
two 15-week semesters to three 10-week quarters, or vice-versa, it makes
practically zero difference. If your course meets five days a week each
week under semesters, it is a 5-semester-hour course, and for the year
the students get 10 semester-hours of credit. If the same course meets
five days a week each quarter, then it is a 5-quarter-hour course, and
for the year the students get 15 quarter-hours of credit. Credit-wise
this is the same; 15 qtr-hrs equals 10 sem-hrs. Yes, with quarters
there is an extra start-up and an extra grading. I believe that is a
minor perturbation.

The calendar-switch problem arises for partial-year courses. If a
course met every day for one semester, how do you adjust it into one
quarter or into two quarters (or vice-versa). One way to adjust it for
sameness in time is to change the period lengths. Another way is to
change the number of days per week the class meets. This can get ugly.
At colleges and universities there is strong reluctance to move away
from 50-minute periods that begin on the hour.

On the other hand, at small institutions like mine, some faculty members
have clout, and some of these want to teach 3-hour courses just on
Tuesday and Thursday and that leads to 75-minute periods on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. We have some 50-minute period and some 75-minute periods on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, and only 50-minute periods on Mon/Wed/Fri. And
then you get faculty who think 75-minutes is too long for the students
to sit, so they take a 5-minute break in the middle, which really turns
into 15 minutes, and the course ends up being two 60-minute sessions a
week for 120 minutes, a full half-hour short of what it should be for a
3-hour class.

In the end, I have been able to keep my year-long classes about the same
through all the calendar changes, but the single-term courses have had
their content adjusted. If the administrators truly want to avoid
adverse educational changes, they need to fix the term lengths and
period lengths so that the in-class time is nearly the same both before
and after the calendar change. This can be done, but often is not done.

Of course it is a completely different question about whether students
experiencing two 75-minute classes are better off or worse off than
students experiencing three 50-minute classes. It is also a different
question whether three quarters are educationally better or worse than
two semesters. My response to both of these is that it depends on the
student. Some students need time to get into a class, and the semester
and longer periods are good for them. Others have a difficult time
enduring a full semester (or long period) of something they do not like
very well, and it is hard for them to keep going for the full time.

Having been at an institution that has changed calendars several times
during my tenure, I can be very cynical as well as totally accurate by
telling you that I heard the very same arguments given for why we should
change from quarters to semesters as I heard earlier for changing from
semesters to quarters. The arguments were the same, but the
administrators making the arguments had changed. Such is educational
life.


Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu