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Salient. Victoria University Newspaper. Volume 38, Number 14. June 20, 1975
Glide Time Term System?
Glide Time Term System?
'Sometimes' said the man, 'Sometimes I sits and thinks. Mostly I just sits.' This applies well to the way the University plans its teaching year.
Occasionally it tries to think up a plan to organise itself around. Mostly however, it potters around with minor changes and lets the big issues sort themselves out. With the wealth of minor changes over the past few years however, (the introduction of the credit system, internal assessment and mid-year final exams), there came a need to look and see where these changes are leading. With this in mind, Prof. Board put a cooling off period of two years at the beginning of last year to look around, especially at a semester system. Since then there's been a lot of sitting, but not much thinking apparent. Soon however, a decision will have to be made on how the teaching year is to be organised. What alternatives are there? What implications have these?
There are three major alternatives (and a variety of hybrids in between these.) Examples of each are contained in the diagram. The semester system is much on the model of that used in the United States, the three-term one that of most NZ universities (tho' many have a study week mid-way thru the second term.) The third alternative is the present system. The alternatives all have a 26-week teaching year, but a variety of times for exams and holidays.
Issues
| 1. | The present system is rather chaotic, being the result of various short-term decisions rather than an overall plan. A coherent plan, either semester or three-term is to be preferred. |
| 2. | Exams—with many courses already finishing at mid-year (and even more if a full semester system is introduced) sufficient time must be set aside for preparation, exam spacing (so students don't have exams too close together), exam marking and result notification. If there is to be a second enrolment period at the start of the second semester, then six weeks is an absolute minimum for these to be covered properly. |
| 3. | Holidays—there are strong grounds for urging breaks in academic study, basically to ensure pressures don't crack too many people up. A semester system has no such safety valves, except for the two-week recuperation period after the first set of exams. While more and more of it is eaten away by essays, etc. the present system does at least have four weeks break in it. A three term approach however has six weeks of holidays, missing out the mid-year exam period. |
| 4. | Holiday timing—Prof. Board and Council have both recognised the values of integrating holidays with those of other Universities and the schools. This is essentially to allow inter-university activities, be they academic seminars or sports tournaments, to take place. Another consideration is that University hostels can attract teachers' refresher courses during the holidays. |
| 5. | Full-year courses—under a semester system the existence of full-year courses would have to be carefully looked at. At present all Law, all honours, most science, most Stage 1 and many other courses are full-year courses. Teachers, especially in Law, are apparently concerned that a semester system would hamper their teaching programme considerably. A hybrid system, leaving full-year courses with the semester set-up would be unsatisfactory as it would give six weeks holiday June-July, which on both academic (eg. loss of memory of work covered) and personal (eg. weather) grounds would be inferior to May and August breaks. |
| 6. | Half-year courses—with a reversal to a three-term system (all exams at end of year), half-year courses could no longer be examined in June. Courses could either be taught in the present block way (i.e. half year, or in some cases third of year), or have half the number of lectures per week for the full year. With this, more essays and assignments could well be due in third term, thus increasing the pressure just before exams. |
A Suggestion
| 1. | The scrapping of the June exam period, and three week holidays in May and August at the same time as other universities. There could be a June study week as well—there is nothing sacrosanct about a 26-week teaching year—other universities don't have it. |
| 2. | With all exams at the end of the year, courses could either be block taught or run throughout the year. This decision should be left up to the students and staff in each class at the beginning of the year—timetabling should be no problem as most block courses now have other courses in the same subject in the other half of the year at the same times of the week (eg. Econ. 201 and 202, Hist. 201 and 203). |
| 3. | A careful look at the workloads of each course should be undertaken with a view to rationalising most part-unit courses to six credits. (History has recently done this for its stage two and three courses.) The primary benefit of this is to decrease the number of exams students are required to sit—it also allows a clear amount of work to be prescribed for each course. |
| 4. | The present pre-set exam timetable, which restricts students choice of the courses they can take, can be removed with the longer period of time available for the exam timetable to be drafted. |
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This is a broad proposal—but then the present debate is about broad proposals. One major benefit in it—on an even broader and more nebulous consideration—is that it should reduce pressure on students in the first and early second terms, thus allowing more time for the hallowed non-academic 'university life'.
Undoubtedly many people will prefer other proposals—let them bring them forward! Only through a full discussion can we hope to arrive at a University timetable that is as acceptable as possible to as many as possible. And if the University is to really function in the interests of people this sort of democracy is vital.
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Comparative Timetables
Note: these are only illustrations of what could happen, they are in no way alternative proposals. For explanation see text.
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