Joel Rauber described a rotten calendar change that should have never
happened the way it did. If the original physics course on quarters
(trimesters) met four days a week for three 10-week terms, why in the
world did that convert to three days a week for semesters?
As John D. said, the calendar change is a separate issue from whether
there should be a syllabus change. When we changed from semesters to
quarters, and then later when we changed from quarters back to
semesters, the edict was that courses, as much as possible, should
remain the same content. If a content change was desired, that took a
separate proposal that had to go through the usual new-course committee
structure.
All of our full-year 5 qtr-hr courses became full-year 5 sem-hr courses.
It is ridiculous for three 5-qtr-hr physics courses to turn into two
4-sem-hr physics courses unless the physics department wanted to so some
restructuring and establish some new courses, or to expand some other
courses. Indeed, another edict we had was that the total hours required
for the major (appropriately converted 3 qtr-hrs to 2 sem-hrs) should
not change. The calendar change cannot result in the major requiring a
greater or lesser percentage of the hours required for graduation,
unless the department proposes such change as a separate proposal, and
manages to get it passed by all the necessary committees.
Where we had to make adjustments was with single-term courses. A single
5-qtr-hr course translates to a single 3.33-sem-hr course. If the
school won't allow non-integer courses, this must become a 3-hr course
(reduction) or a 4-hr course (expansion). We had to match expansions
and contractions to come out to zero overall difference (for the major)
plus-or-minus one hour. This called for some gives and takes, but it
was not too bad.
We did take one beating that we fought hard against, but lost. We
converted from three 10-week quarters to two 14-week semesters. Those
who argued for this reduction claimed it was not really a reduction
because the extra start-up and shutdown for 3 terms a year rather than 2
terms a year resulted in loss of instruction. Incidentally, in Ohio we
only got away with that because we are a private school. State schools
in Ohio are mandated by the Ohio Board of Regents to have 30 weeks of
instruction in the school year. That can be 3 times 10 weeks, or 2
times 15 weeks, or anything that comes out to 30 weeks of instruction.
(Final exam days are not instruction days.)
At Bluffton, on quarters we did not do labs the first week or last week,
so we did 8 labs a quarter, 24 labs for the year. With 15-week
semesters, we could have had 26 labs for the year which would have been
an expansion, but with 14-week semesters we still get 24 labs for the
year. That was part of the rationale that 14-week semesters were
"equivalent" to 10-week quarters. So our lab time did not suffer, but
we did lose two weeks of lecture (over the year) which means a class
that meets 3 days a week for a year went from 90 lectures to 84
lectures. However, we compensated for that in a sneaky way. Rather
than giving exams during class time, we started giving exams in the
evening. This gave us back our lectures. Students did not complain
because we allowed them more time to work on the exam rather than
limiting them to 50 minutes.
So I can't claim that the Bluffton calendar changes were perfect, but
they were way better than what Joel described.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics and Chemistry
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu