08/10/04
Teachers at universities adopt, intentionally, a fundamentally different strategy of instruction than teachers in high school. In high school, the teacher lays out during class what the students are expected to learn and then directly supervises the learning, most of which occurs also during class meetings. Although work outside class (homework) is a part of high school education, most learning occurs during class. At universities, the teacher still lays out during class what students are expected to learn but expects that only a small part of the learning takes place during the class meetings. Teachers expect university students to accept the responsibility for learning most of what they need to learn outside normal class meeting times. This approach is a major reason why university students typically spend less than half the time in class high school students spend. In universities, therefore, the teacher spends much of the class time explaining to students what they should learn. Then the students leave class and learn the material, usually with the help of other students and perhaps with the help of the teacher or an assistant, study groups and, perhaps, interaction with a computer. This approach leads to the oft-stated rule of thumb that university students should spend approximately 2 hours outside class studying and learning the course material for each hour spent in class.
The principle that underlies this approach is that post-secondary students should learn to take responsibility for learning the specified material as a step toward lifelong learning in the real world. In the world of practice, they must assume not only the responsibility of learning whatever they need to know, but of deciding what they should learn, as well. From this perspective, a university serves students as a kind of halfway house between learning in the highly structured high school environment and learning in the real world after they leave the university. Indeed, preparing for a lifetime of learning is a basic purpose of earning an undergraduate degree.
Spending 2 hours outside the classroom class for each hour spent in the classroom means that each 3 hour course requires, on the average, about 9 hours of time each week. Of course, this amount of time is a rule of thumb: some courses require more time, some require less. Folklore has it that courses in mathematics, science and engineering may take even more time. To keep the arithmetic simple, let’s say that a 3-hour course requires 10 hours per week. Thus, the time required for 15 semester hours of courses (5 courses) adds up to about 50 hours, more than the time required for a full time job.
Most people find that, over several months, the most they can work, on a sustained basis, is about 60 hours per week. Indeed, most people who work 60 hours per week get very tired and probably do not do their best work. Similarly, few students can complete 18 hours of courses (6 courses, 60 hours per week) successfully in a semester. The ones who do are usually very tired and not much fun to be around.
Frequently, students mix work and study. A common practice is to enroll in 12 hours (4 courses, about 40 hours per week) and to work 20 hours per week, a total time commitment of about 60 hours per week. Indeed, many find a combination of work and study that requires 60 hours per week is easier than either working 60 hours per week or taking 6 courses. Perhaps switching back and forth between work and study makes the 60 hours go by more quickly.
Students who commit to a combination of work and study that totals to more than 60 hours per week often find that they can maintain that hectic pace for, perhaps, the first half of the semester. Then they tire, and things begin to fall apart. Soon, their grades begin to suffer and they are forced to drop some of the courses in which they are enrolled in an effort to salvage the remaining ones. If students do not drop the extra courses quickly enough when their grades begin to fall, the period of poor performance in the courses during the period of overload can drag down the final grade a letter grade or more below what they could have earned under less time pressure. Even if the tactic of abandoning courses saves the remaining ones, however, note that the net result of enrolling in extra courses, ironically, is to slow progress toward completing the curriculum for the degree.
In theory, students should spend an average of something like 6 or 7 hours per week outside class studying course material for each 3-hour course. In practice, some students tend to procrastinate until the night before a major exam in a course to study the material they should have been learning all along. Simple arithmetic shows the peril in this strategy. Major exams in 3-hour courses typically occur one month, or more, apart. A minimum of four weeks at a minimum of 6 hours per week totals to 24 hours – clearly more hours than are available the night, or even two nights, before the exam. The key point is that, each week, students need to spend time studying the course material.
The problem becomes especially insidious in 3-hour courses that include little homework and few, if any, weekly quizzes. In such courses, the student receives little feedback about success, or failure, in the course until the first major exam, perhaps after a quarter, or even a third or one-half, of the course has passed. By that time, failure is difficult to reverse – too much time is required to catch up, and even if the student accomplishes that minor miracle, the low grade on the first major exam can damage severely the ultimate grade for the course. To keep from receiving a poor grade, the student often chooses to drop the course, a lamentable loss of time and effort for both the student and for the university.
If infrequent examinations cause such problems, why not conduct examinations more frequently? Although practical considerations of time and cost certainly enter in, the fundamental reason for infrequent major examinations in university courses is to require students to take responsibility for learning without the close supervision they may have experienced during learning in high school. Thus, infrequent examinations are one step toward the student learning how to learn without supervision, a basic objective of earning an undergraduate degree.