As we moved towards a student-centered approach and look for ways to increase student enrollment and retention, we must look at a very important part of our programming which tends to be overlooked when we talk about being innovative. What am I talking about? Course scheduling.
When deciding what is the best schedule for your programs, one thing is common practice, to create courses based on students being full-time and available for daytime courses. But when looking at student enrollment, and a considerable amount of the student body is part-time, we need to rethink our strategy and make data-informed decisions. And by data-informed, I mean survey-based. We need to learn what the student body wants, not what has been working for us in the past. In the end, we are here for the students. And by students, I meant the full student body. Now, are we really going to get the input from the full student body? Not likely. But we can make our best efforts.
What are best efforts? Well, for starters, make the survey easily accessible (online form, adaptable for phones/other devices). Have instructors announce it in their classrooms and put it in their online course shells. Put QR codes on the walls in the cafeteria, the library, the bathrooms, all classrooms and anywhere students hang out with an explanation of what it is and the importance of why they must take it. Don’t just send a mass email, that students will ignore or miss within the large number of emails they get, and called it done. Be firm and proactive about your change.
Some questions you need to think about when designing our surveys are: Are the students working? What are their schedules? Are they interested in online asynchronous, evening or weekend courses? Do they want to travel to school for night classes? Do they prefer online, on campus, remote? Would they be interested in accelerated courses?
You can become very creative when scheduling courses. Here are some examples:
- Online and on campus in shorter schedules, for example, 3 weeks, 5 weeks, 6 weeks or 8 weeks schedules.
- Full day (8am-5pm, every other weekend) courses, that means only going to school 5 full days during a full semester.
- 5hr-Saturday classes every other weekend.
- Hybrid courses, with meetings one day, and the rest of the work online.
Accelerated courses:
Let’s start with the numbers. Students who are part-time can take up to 4 years to complete a 2yr degree. And 8 years to complete a 4yr degree. This may be a cause of frustration for some students, as they want to complete their program within a reasonable time. Schools are offering accelerated courses and creative scheduling that allows the student to take classes that fit their current needs and finish within a reasonable amount of time, while still studying part-time. We must change with the environment if we expect to make it in the world of today. Students have many choices available, and schools are adapting themselves to the needs of the students vs making the student adapt their life around that of the school.
Accelerated courses provide students with the option to complete their coursework faster, which would translate in increased graduation rates. The number of colleges offering accelerated programs is an indication of this trend. Accelerated programs also allow the college to have multiple start dates during the year (for programs that are 8 weeks long, you can have 5 start dates through the year), allowing students to start when they are ready, and not wait until the next semester to start. For students, part-time students can complete their degree within a reasonable time, while able to fulfill work and family responsibilities. Students can plan a full year in advance.
Accelerated programming can be applied to full programs, as well as just specific classes. To attract more students, you may want to look at full programs vs individual courses.
Tip: Schools are starting to see the need of implementing other options aside from scheduling to allow the student to graduate faster. These include noncredit to credit pathways, Prior Learning Assessment (PLA), testing (like CLEP/DANTES) and actual “needs vs wants” in program design. Look out for upcoming blog posts on these topics and a blog specific to accelerated programming in the future.
Closing
Workforce Warrior is an education blog, created by a workforce development professional with 20+ years in all areas of workforce development and college programming, including admissions, advising, career services and program development. The goal of Workforce Warrior is to pass on the knowledge collected over the years to fellow workforce and college professionals.
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