Require teachers to post course previews
Most students don’t know much of anything about the courses they’ll be taking in the next semester until, at best, the day of their first class. The weeks they could have spent creating daily schedules for readings, setting aside times for studying and calling out of work for busy weeks when projects or papers are due, are instead wasted in anxious silence.
Shane Wade
Opinion Editor
The most satisfying and useful tool at a college student’s disposable is the course syllabus. It tells you everything you need to know about a single course within three to five pages.
As a student coming from the English department, I enjoy the privilege of knowing weeks in advance exactly how many of my classes have lengthy papers, which ones have weekly quizzes, whether or not there’ll be a midterm and/or a final exam and exactly what will be learned in class, from authors to critical questions.
Unfortunately, not all students are so lucky.
Most don’t know much of anything about the courses they’ll be taking in the next semester until, at best, the day of their first class. The weeks they could have spent creating daily schedules for readings, setting aside times for studying and calling out of work for busy weeks when projects or papers are due, are instead wasted in anxious silence.
Information about specific courses is crucial in choosing classes for the next semester because it allows students to balance their classes and alleviate potential course overload. Advanced reviewing and planning of courses cuts down on the stress that both students and advisers have to deal with during the add/drop period, as students rush to renegotiate their schedule. Likewise, an advanced posting of a course’s description and syllabus helps cut down on the number of post-add/drop period withdrawals by forewarning students what assessments they’ll be undertaking.
With the introduction of the DegreeWorks program, it’s easier than ever to know what courses are needed in order to complete a degree. But knowing is only half the battle.
Students also need to understand what a class entails prior to registering for it. A bland course title and a short, potentially out-of date description acquired from a hasty Google search aren’t sufficient.
The results from last week’s myVCU poll, with 83 percent of students voting in favor of requiring faculty to post the course syllabus prior to the beginning of the semester, speaks for itself: An ample course packet containing the times, dates, CRN numbers and a paragraph-long description of each course being offered under that major/department should be forwarded to every student within a given department prior to registration. By the week prior to the start of classes, faculty should be required to post both their syllabus and required booklist.
Doing so gives advisers weeks to meet and deliberate with students about the advantages and disadvantages of taking a particular course for the coming semester and whether the student is actually interested in what material is covered.
What students are asking for isn’t unreasonable. By providing us with the tools to make better, informed decisions about our path to graduating, the university can begin fostering a system that encourages students to be selfaccountable employees in their postgraduate life.
Education is about exploration and venturing into the unknown, but we’ve also reached a point where for both economic and practical reasons, faculty members ought to be more forthcoming with such information. With programs, funding and budgets being cut, if corners are to be cut, let’s cut them in favor of the most afflicted: the students.
