Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Were I an administrator...

I would outlaw 3-day-a-week classes. And it's for actually more reasons than it's the most annoying thing to have classes three days a week and not have a three day weekend. Seriously though, not even teachers want to teach that many times a week. Trust me, I know many many teachers. But let's put that aside for the moment and look at this from a teacher/student/learning point of view. For a three credit hour class that is three days a week, the classes are 50 minutes long. This is such an awkward amount of time to teach. I have never had a 50 minute class that didn't seem rushed. Currently I am in a math class that is three days a week and it's not good. It's almost not worth it to go to class because it takes me longer to get to and from the class on the bus than I'm actually in class. Classes which are two days a week are an hour and twenty minutes long. It works out to the same amount of time but with two classes you can actually get into a topic and even (shock idea) have a disussion about the topic that is longer than two minutes. It all works out to the same time but I truly feel that if you only had classes twice a week which were longer people would learn better. So were I to be a university administrator - classes two days a week, not three.

2 comments:

Elizabeth Downie said...

Makes perfect sense to me. :) Like the new picture, by the way. The new camera is treating you well!

Kara said...

Agree. I HATE teaching MWF classes. I finally have Tuesday classes this semester after a year and a half of the 50 minute classes, and I get so excited when I prep because I can do so much more!