Section 4.2 When to teach: Modifying the schedule.
¶The card sorting process led not only to a radical rearranging of content within courses but also to major changes in course meeting times and frequency. In considering this new arrangement for content, the PIs realized it would be better for the students to meet every day for one course for three weeks, with three courses offered in series during a term. The PI explained:
I don't remember exactly when we came to that conclusion but it was fairly early on...We were putting three chunks in a term, and it wasn't very easy to do them in parallel, so I think we said, “well, what happens if we just do them in series, one at a time and then do them every day?”
The traditional format had been two separate 3-credit courses meeting in parallel for three hours each week (Monday/Wednesday/Friday) for a total of six hours each week and six credits each term. The PIs were proposing to change this to one 2-credit course meeting every day, for one hour on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and two hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for a total of seven hours each week for three weeks, with three such courses meeting in series for a total of six credits during each ten-week term:
We had been teaching E and M and math methods trying to synchronize that and that was already six hours a week, so I mean it was Monday, Wednesday, Friday, one hour blocks for each course, but it was still six contact hours, so it wasn't that strange a thing for us to say, “Wouldn't it be nice for these small blocks if we just met every day?” I think we were thinking about just six hours, and then we decided, well Monday, Wednesday, Friday, one hour, and Tuesday, Thursday, two hour blocks, fit the schedule better, but we weren't at all sure how we were going to fill two 2-hour blocks a week because all we knew was the few computer visualization things that we had.
Each paradigm course meets daily, for one hour Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and for two hours on Tuesday and Thursday, for three weeks. Instead of six hours of instruction in two intense but uncoordinated separate courses with no labs each week, the students participate in seven hours of coherent daily instruction that merges lecture, small group activities, and laboratory experiences in an interactive environment. Scheduling during the senior year follows a more typical three hours a week format with separate capstone courses as indicated in the table above.