Neil Hanlon and UNBC's geography department have come up with alternative for students having a hard time maintaining a heavy course load.
Instead of a having four or five courses all at once during a 13-week semester, they will have it down to one at a time.
Block scheduling is on its way to the Cranbrook Hill campus.
Starting in January, third-year and fourth-year human geography students, postgraduates and community members who might not otherwise attend UNBC will have the chance to take entire courses in 2 1/2-week blocks as part of a pilot project. Each course will include an average of three hours per day of instruction, which allows students more time each day to research the topics before returning to class the following day.
Hanlon, a UNBC associate professor and chair of the geography department, is convinced that without the worry of having to balance their time on other other subjects, students stand a better chance of learning the course material.
"The biggest advantage is you would have the undivided attention of your students and they wouldn't have three or four other courses weighing on their minds," said Hanlon. "When you factor in four of five courses in a semester over a 13-week period, it's kind of difficult for them to remember what you were talking about the second or third week of class."
UNBC president George Iwama is a big supporter of the block scheduling concept and it was first discussed with UNBC faculty a year ago. Colorado State College pioneered the one-class-at-a-time approach and has offered courses taught that way since 1970, while in B.C., Quest University also offers it.
The undergraduate courses in the pilot project, with the instructors and dates of each course, include: Critical Perspectives on International Development (Catherine Nolin, Jan. 7-23); Health Geography (Hanlon, Jan. 28-Feb. 13); First Nations and Indigenous Geography (Sarah de Leeuw, Feb. 25-March 13); and Geographies of Culture, Rights and Power (Nolin, April 22-May 8).
Three or four days at the end of each course will be designated as a catch-up days to make up classes in case an instructor or a student gets ill during the block period.
"We're building in contingency plans for illness because missing a day is like missing a week," said Hanlon. "We will use technology where we can. There's a conference Skype program that allows more than one user at a time that we will invest in, just in case a flu bug breaks out, that would allow them to participate from home."
Because of the condensed time periods of block courses, students will not be expected to complete term papers as each course finishes. Instead, a four-week period will be set aside as a block from mid-March to mid-April to allow students to focus entirely on their research papers or projects.
So far, nine undergraduate students have applied to the block program.
If the pilot project gains a solid footing and the concept is applied throughout the school year, Hanlon said that will give instructors more flexibility in their schedules to conduct spring and summer research or attend conferences during the fall and winter semesters, traditionally the busiest times for teaching.
The block program is also open to anybody from the community who is not part of any university program but is motivated strictly by an interest in the course. Graduate students who sign up for any of the block courses will be given additional work.
"If they have sufficient academic preparation or life history, maybe somebody who's interested in the health geography course who has been a social worker for 12 years, they have practical experience and I'd love to add that to the mix," said Hanlon. "He or she could be sharing all their life experiences with the students to see how these ideas match up with what's on the street or in a clinic."
Other UNBC faculties will be waiting for feedback from the geography department before considering whether to adopt block delivery programs. Hanlon foresees difficulties with condensing some science lab courses and English novel studies into a 2 1/2 week period.
"People [in other faculties] are keeping an eye on it and some are all gung-ho about it and some have some concerns," said Hanlon. "There are a surprising number of students on campus who have had experience with block delivery and they were really helpful with the information they shared with us."
