With this Fall Semester, UMUC fully transitioned all of their classes to an 8-week format. Most classes previously had been 12 or 13 weeks in length. The price is the same, and the number of units granted for completing the class are the same, but the material, and time, there is less. Here’s the pertinent commentary from one of the course evaluations I’ve written this Fall:
This course suffers from the shorter (8 week) session length. The ONE value of the shorter courses is that they’re shorter. It’s like 1.5 quart ice cream for the same price as the old half gallons. They’re lighter, but that’s it. Otherwise, only value had been subtracted from the courses, but they still cost the same.
Not much more to say, really. I’m still making big efforts to get as much as I can out of this work, but the school isn’t making it any easier with this Education-Lite policy. I’m sure they’ve got some perfectly rational explanation for what they’re doing, and probably some education theoretician backing up the move with brilliant data, but that only works in the computer models. Like with climate, and unlike the world for practitioners of Null-A, the map is NOT the world.
