Why not turn loose creativity in educational design?
Yavapai Community College shows little creativity in its educational design. This is especially true when you see the months it is closed down with no students on campus. For example, the fall-winter break for students runs from December 14 to January 14.
With a new President, there is hope that serious creativity may return to change the current stodgy educational paradigm where there are hundreds of hours of potential learning going unused. However, a serious creative change in how things have always been done will, of course, require a lot of very hard work and commitment.
One of the first and easiest changes to the College’s current educational design is to begin using all the down time you find in its year-long schedule for FLEX courses. Why not, for example, use this period in the fall-winter break as an opportunity to teach one or two credit courses not regularly offered in the curriculum in an intense compressed-format? Or, occasionally a three-credit course. Call the period something like “Our Intense Flexible, Creative offerings.”
Studies of Colleges using intense ;short courses have shown they have advantages. David Gooblar, writing in the Chronicle Vitae observed the following: “Whether they are taught in the summer or at other times of the year, these short intensified courses are increasingly a standard feature at North American universities. Cramming a whole semester’s worth of material into as little as three weeks often appeals to older students, to students with inflexible work schedules or family commitments, and to those trying to make up credits for various reasons.”
He went on to write that “In a paper published in the Canadian Journal of University Continuing Education, William Kops, a professor of general studies at the University of Manitoba, surveyed the literature on compressed-format courses and found a surprising amount of unanimity.
“There’s not a huge amount of research into the quality of these courses, but what there is almost entirely supports the conclusion that they are as good as semester-long courses. Using a variety of metrics, researchers over the past 20 years have concluded that intensive courses do no disservice to students, and may ever offer some advantages. For example, students tend to be more focused, discussions deeper, and teacher-student relationships closer in compressed courses than in traditional ones.”
The College could, for example, consider Flex courses like the following: Sport and American Society, Cross-Cultural Communication, Living with Quakes, World Music, Dance in Culture, US National Government. Highly specialized Career and Technical Education courses could also be taught as a part of the Flex program.
It’s time to think creatively; really outside the box. Considering Flex courses is a mere beginning.