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ILLUSTRATION BY THE CHRONICLE
Chronicles of Higher Education
Some Colleges Revamped the Academic Calendar in Response to the Pandemic. Here’s What They Learned.
By Beth McMurtrie
January 23, 2021
As the fall approached and colleges considered what impact Covid-19
would have on their campuses, some of them settled on a solution: an
altered academic calendar.
Many made adjustments like delaying the start of the semester for a
couple of weeks or moving classes online after Thanksgiving to keep
students at home. But a number of small liberal-arts colleges did
something more radical: They cut their semester into halves, on the
idea that navigating two courses at a time — albeit at a much quicker
pace — would be logistically and intellectually easier for students
than juggling four at once.
Now, with one semester under their belts, these colleges are looking
back on what they learned. The experiment with the academic calendar
came with its share of stress. But as often happens with innovations
that emerge in response to a crisis, it also sparked other changes — in
this case, to central elements of course design and teaching — that
were less obviously connected to the logistics of the class schedule.
The pandemic forced professors to strip teaching down to the essentials.
Many of the colleges believe their decision to break up the semester in
the midst of the pandemic was the right one, says Eric Boynton, provost
and dean of Beloit College, which was among the first to convert to
modules, or “mods” as many now call them. He helped organize a
conference this month in which about 20 institutions that had
transitioned to modules gathered virtually to talk about the experience.
Among the virtues of splitting up the semester: Colleges that went
fully remote were relieved that students didn’t have to shoulder four
online courses simultaneously. Those that taught in person could safely
socially distance because only half as many classes as usual were in
session. Others that enroll a substantial number of international
students say time-zone differences were easier to manage with a smaller
course load. Still others found that five days a week of contact
between students and professors allowed people to form closer bonds and
helped mitigate the alienating aspects of social distancing, including
masks and the use of videoconferencing.
At the same time, when considering whether they want to continue with
the shorter, more intense schedule post-Covid, many say no. Teaching at
such a rapid clip, they found, is exhausting, makes it hard for
students to catch up if they fall behind, and can inhibit learning.
“To quote Churchill, Democracy is the worst form of government except
for all the others,” says Boynton. “Mods is the worst delivery module
in the time of Covid except for all the others.”
Focusing on What Matters
One potentially longer-term benefit, many say, is that professors had
to ask themselves: What really matters in this course and what do I
want students to get out of it? The transition to abbreviated terms
ramped up training and campus conversation around effective teaching
and learning.
“Being forced to experiment in a sense was, I hate to say ‘exciting,’
but it made my brain work in ways it hasn’t had to,” says Katrina
Phillips, an assistant professor of history at Macalester College.
Like many professors, Phillips spent the summer reimagining her courses
to make them adaptable to online teaching, such as videotaping her
lectures in order to create a “flipped” classroom, in which students
watch the video beforehand and spend class time in discussion.
But because of the shorter terms, she also had to strip her teaching
down to the essentials. What did she absolutely need to cover in
“American Indian History to 1871,” for example, given that she only had
7.5 weeks to do so?
Because she is the only professor on campus teaching Native history,
Phillips says the hardest part was knowing she had to let go of some
content. To compensate, she asked her students to collaborate on a
timeline of key events, something that proved hugely successful. Not
only did students cover material she could not get to in her lectures,
they learned from one another, as each focused on historical events
that meant something to them.
As to whether students learned as much, or as effectively, in the
shorter terms, Phillips says it’s hard to know because of other
limitations created by the pandemic.
Boynton says that was a common refrain at the conference. “One of the
topics of this meeting was, How do you assess this thing? No one really
can,” he says. “It’s hard to disentangle mods from Covid from online
from no breaks in the semester. It made for this pressure-cooker
atmosphere.”
Karine Moe, Macalester’s provost and dean of the faculty, says that
when she’s asked professors and students what they thought of the
shorter terms, views were mixed. And sometimes what people complained
about had more to do with the pandemic, like having to stare at screens
for hours on end.
“I think we made the best choice we could in a very hard situation. The
module plan allowed us to pivot, to have as much in-class instruction
as we were able to. It contributed to low Covid cases on campus.”
Deeper Changes
At Mount Holyoke College, professors and administrators faced two key
challenges: More than a quarter of their students are international —
including many from China — and the college remained online this year.
That meant that students were learning together but in vastly different
time zones.
As at many of the colleges that switched to modules, faculty members
were given a lot of discretion in how to teach their courses. Aside
from meeting federal and accreditation requirements for contact hours
and course hours, professors could determine how much and how
frequently to meet synchronously and asynchronously, says Elizabeth
Markovits, associate dean of the faculty and director of the campus
teaching and learning center at Mount Holyoke.
Some professors might come up with a weekly schedule: Mondays are for
videotaped lectures, Tuesdays are for live discussions, Wednesdays are
for one-on-one meetings, and so on. “We wanted to give faculty the
autonomy to make their choices,” she says. “Dance class is going to
look very different from an upper-level English seminar.”
While faculty and student reactions were all over the map, Markovits
noticed a few patterns. First-year students seemed to adapt the
easiest, probably because they had nothing to compare it to. And
pre-tenure and visiting faculty members got particularly involved in
revamping their courses. About a third of the faculty decided to teach
the same material as always, just at double the pace, she says. The
rest were willing to rework their courses, and those that did tended to
report better outcomes.
“I talked to one scientist who said, ‘I’ve known I should have flipped
my classroom for years. But I never had time.’” she says. “It’s not
like we had time to undertake major curriculum renovation, but what was
the choice?”
When attending the conference on modules, Markovits was struck by how
many campuses reported that there was widespread faculty engagement
around course design. Mount Holyoke doesn’t plan to continue with mods
in the fall, but she can see the benefits it has brought to the
campuses that have tried it.
“It really has created this community of teachers,” she says. “We talk
about teaching in a way that we have never done, in such a sustainable,
deep way.”
One common element to teaching at an accelerated pace, several faculty
and administrators say, has been a shift toward inclusive teaching.
That might mean, for example, breaking assignments down into smaller
components, and spelling out expectations in greater detail. Professors
say this has been helpful in keeping students on track when the fast
pace leaves little room for procrastination or stumbling.
A surprise benefit, says Renae Brodie, a professor of biological
sciences at Mount Holyoke, is that all of her students in an
upper-level behavioral ecology course performed better. Normally, says
Brodie, she might have a few superstars in each class. This year, she
saw a higher level of quality in all of the assignments, spread out
more evenly among the students.
She attributes that to the fact that she reduced the number of projects
from five to three but asked students to dive more deeply into each
one. Because students spent time revising their work, with more
immediate and intensive feedback from her instead of moving on to the
next project, she says, everyone’s writing and research skills improved.
Like a lot of professors, particularly those in STEM fields, she
worries about the longer-term impact of learning under Covid. If
students are learning less content, as many are, even at campuses that
have retained the semester system, will that hurt them next year or the
year after? She doesn’t know the answer yet but is grateful for the
chance to rethink her teaching this year.
“The mod system was hard — really hard to do. But it really
forced you to look at your course and say, What is absolutely core?”
she says. “Every frill had to come off. If you couldn’t justify
something or it was repetitious, it had to go.”
Mods May Stick Around
Looking ahead, some colleges are keeping mods on the table, possibly
because the pandemic will still be affecting college campuses into the
fall.
“It remains an open question” at Bates College, says Joshua McIntosh,
vice president for campus life. While everyone has been exhausted by
the intensity of modular teaching, he says, if physical-distancing
requirements remain, then it might need to continue. The alternative
would be adding classes at night and on weekends.
Other campuses say they could see incorporating modules in some form,
even after they revert to semesters. At Beloit, for example, two
professors might be able to team-teach an interdisciplinary class, says
Boynton, by combining two mods into one semester-long course. Others
have talked about how short, immersive terms are particularly well
suited for community-based learning, where students benefit from
spending time together on projects outside the classroom.
Community colleges have a longer history with short-term courses, in
part to accommodate the schedules of working adults who may find eight
weeks manageable but 15 weeks unworkable. Four-year colleges that
enroll a lot of students with outside obligations might find mods
similarly useful.
Travis Frampton, provost and vice president for academic affairs at
Schreiner University, a small, Hispanic-serving institution in Texas,
says he was struck by how many academically strong students ended up
dropping some of their courses last spring, after the pandemic hit.
Sent back home, sometimes into chaotic circumstances, students had to
take on additional family responsibilities, making it harder to keep up
with multiple courses.
That was one reason Schreiner broke its semester into two terms this
year, he says, and may be an argument for keeping that system even
after the pandemic is under control. This fall, student grades were up
over all and the number of D’s, F’s and withdrawals was down. Many
students seemed to like the more flexible, concentrated schedule, he
says. “Our students did not fail in the eight-week Covid environment.”
While it’s ultimately a decision that will be made in consultation with
faculty, Frampton is optimistic that shorter terms can play a role in
undergraduate education. “Let’s give this a shot. It not only helps
students with learning outcomes and concentration, but it also helps
accessibility efforts.”
Read this and other articles at Chronicles of Higher Education here
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