Erica Jacobs: Revising an educational assumption
By: Erica Jacobs
Examiner Columnist
August 5, 2009
Sometimes we use time away from routine to reinvent ourselves. Nothing as dramatic as a reinvention happened during the three weeks I spent at Oxford University with local students, but the British system of reduced numbers of class sessions and more work outside class has led me to question our own system. Why do colleges and universities measure their course requirements by the number of hours students spend in the classroom?
Higher education in the U.S. has almost universally given three credits to courses that meet one, two or three times a week for approximately three hours total, in 14 or 15 week semesters. Schools on the quarter system adjust the course load and hours proportionally so that, overall, a typical year of college is equivalent whether on the semester or quarterly model.
When I translated the British model of small seminars and tutorials into credits in the United States, I began to question our assumptions. Should we apply the contact hour threshold for students, whose meetings with tutors and in seminars occupy fewer hours, but whose work outside the classroom is much more extensive than in the U.S.? I found myself asking where, exactly, do we learn? Is it in the classroom, or doing directed reading and research on our own time?
The obvious answer is that a combination of the two is optimal. Yet our educational institutions, with few exceptions, only measure in-class time, and not time out of class. Anyone who has ever taken a college or university class knows "homework" loads vary radically from teacher to teacher. Students learn to balance their course load so that they take "lite" courses along with those that require enormous out-of-class efforts. Yet on the transcript, a grade is a grade is a grade, with no one, other than the student, knowing how much effort was expended achieving that grade.
What I witnessed at Oxford called this whole system into question. Students met with professors for relatively few hours, but attended plenary lectures daily in their subjects, and did a lot of reading before the class started, and considerable research for their papers towards the end of each course. They often saw their tutors at meals or after hours since all students were in residence in a single college, where they continued the intellectual dialogue (clearly not a practical model for most U.S. colleges.) Students took charge of their own learning in ways I rarely see in my George Mason University classes.
How can we encourage our students, who aren't necessarily residents of the college they attend, to take more responsibility for their own learning? More individualized learning is clearly key, but how is that possible with classes of 25 or 40?
I haven't come to any conclusions, and there are so many complications -- including the reality that most students here attend more than one college before graduation and therefore need equivalent transfer credits -- that I can fully understand why the in-class measure is used as the basis for credit hours. Yet what it measures is seat time, not learning. Is there a way to measure learning? Or should we just accept the practicality of the "contact hours" model?
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at ejacob1@gmu.edu.
What kids are reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre and data from booksellers. Information on the books below came from The Washington Post's Book World, June 14, 2009, and Amazon.com's list of children's best-sellers.
Books for summer reading
1. Melonhead by Katy Kelly, Illustrated by Gillian Johnson (Ages 7-9)
2. Bettina Valentino and the Picasso Club by Niki Daly (Ages 7-9)
3. Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen (Ages 13 and up)
4. Redwoods by Jason Chin (Ages 8-12)
5. The Twilight Prisoner by Katherine Marsh (Ages10 and up)
6. Pharaoh's Boat by David Weitzman (Ages 8-12)
7. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Illustrated by Dave Mckean (Ages 9-12)
8. Rules by Cynthia Lord (Ages 9-12)
9. The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Petron, Illustrated by Matt Phelan (Ages 9-12)
10. The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson, Illustrated by Beth Krommes (Ages 4-8)
More from Erica Jacobs
- Erica Jacobs: What no teacher can prepare for
- Erica Jacobs: Horace's Hope: My educational journey
- Erica Jacobs: I am Horace: More thoughts on Theodore Sizer's progressive Educational Philosophy
- Erica Jacobs: I Am Horace: How Theodore Sizer nailed what really happens in high school
- Erica Jacobs: When words fail us
