The first draft of Trent’s Academic Plan recommends that full-year courses be phased out in favour of half-year courses by 2013. Arthur spoke with various professors about the benefits, along with possible disadvantages and worries about this action.
Dr. Moira Howes, Chair of Philosophy Department and member of the Academic Planning Committee, revealed that the Philosophy Department actually made the choice to switch to half credits independently and prior to the drafting of the Academic plan.
Howes says that half-year courses are easier for students to manage. As well, students in different programs at Trent where half courses are the norm were having difficulty fitting the philosophy full-year courses into their schedules.
Howes also explained that the switch to half-courses has made it easier for the department to add new courses to increase options for students. “Our new second year courses — Love and Desire, Death, and Philosophy of Sport and Recreation — will appeal to students in many different programs at Trent, as will our new third year courses in Philosophy and Literature, and Philosophy of Emotion.We’re excited about these changes and feedback from students throughout the process has been very positive.”
Dr. Byron Stoyles, also from the Philosophy Department, shared many of the same sentiments as his colleague Dr. Howes, but wittily said, “Maybe one thing half-courses do that full courses can’t do is allow students to be done with something they’re not good at faster.”
Dr. Fraser Bleasdale of the Psychology Department said that his department has been converting full year courses to half courses for quite some years so that now all but one of their courses is a half course. “For the most part half courses seem to work well and students seem to prefer them. I think students appreciate the flexibility that half courses offer.” Bleasdale believes that professors should be able to use their discretion when planning course material for half year courses. “We professors need to use good judgement when planning half-year courses, especially when compressing full into half-credit courses. There is a temptation for the professor to try to include too much of the same material and, of course, that just can’t be done.”
Dr. Victoria De Zwaan, Chair of the Cultural Studies Department, had something different to say: “I don’t want to say that there’s some sort of natural length of a course... but I really don’t think we need to take a cookie-cutter approach.”
De Zwaan raised the issue of professors taking half-sabbaticals. Half-year courses can be useful in these situations. However, she explained that the Cultural Studies department has some very successful full-year courses that students really enjoy, and that there is a commitment that the professors of these courses have to that pedagogy.
“Our students feel very strongly about full-year courses, they like having the length, being able to get into a topic and really work with it and do an extended study over the whole year, and also not having to stop and start and stop and start.”
De Zwaan believes that departments should and are supposed to be able to develop their own curriculum. The Cultural Studies department has been pressured to switch from full-year courses, and have in fact added some half-year courses over the years; however, she said, “We’ve introduced [half courses] on the basis that they have to be their own courses, they can’t just be courses split in two, and that they’re for a particular purpose. So, it’s not that we’re moving over to half-courses, it’s that we’re introducing half-courses when we think it’s good to introduce them, and when we introduce them we review them for being real courses of their own.”
De Zwaan highlighted that one of the problems with Trent’s full-year courses is the demand from transfer students. International students that come for one term may want to take certain courses that happen to be full-year courses, with no half-year alternative.
Dr. Michael Neumann, who has been teaching in the philosophy department at Trent since 1975, has seen the benefits of both full and half-year courses. On one hand, he claims that “to commit yourself to a half-course is much easier than to commit yourself to a full-course” and that “there are some subjects that package better in half a year.” He told Arthur that the benefits being drawn out of the half-year course switch debate may have their merit, but that these are not huge advantages over full-year courses.
On the other hand, Neumann believes that
“there are courses that really benefit from the development that does go over the course of a year, and even if they are divided into two half courses with the same material, it’s not the same. There isn’t the same commitment and you cannot count on the same continuity.”
Dr. Brad White, Chair of the Biology department, believes that use of half-year courses in the Biology department have been successful and that the sort of half-course system set up in the sciences work well. Regarding the question of whether students’ grades have improved or declined with the use of half-year courses, as opposed to when full-year courses were offered in the department, he simply said: “we haven’t seen that difference in grades.”
However, White believes that Bachelor of Science degrees are quite different from Bachelor of Arts degrees, and that the differences in the programs need to be taken into account: “to say that one thing should apply to both, or even across 26 departments is a pretty sweeping thing to do... I’m not a great fan of cookie-cutting across the university for anything. I think we suffer from that. I’d much rather there was local individuality.”
Dr. David Newhouse, Chair of the Indigenous Studies Department and member of the Academic Planning Committee, made a statement about the use of full-year courses in his particular department: “cultural conversation requires sustained effort.”
At the core of this discussion is the weighing of benefits for students. The recommendation is apparently being made with the interests of students at the forefront of the plan. If there is any criticism of the plan claiming that the switch is being made for the benefit of the administration or the institution as a whole, Professor White believes that it should not be forgotten that the university is still a business, and that academic issues need to be balanced out with what is best for the university.
The Academic Planning committee includes representatives of various faculties. Since late August, the committee has had over thirty-five consultations with members of the community. The final draft will be presented in January and February to the Senate and the Board of Governors.
