By Michael Bernaschina, Staff Writer
Susquehanna will begin offering classes for students to take during the winter recess in 2017.
“[Winter classes were] something the administration had talked about with faculty, primarily the university council,” said Nicholas Clark, assistant professor of political science. “I’m the director of the summer programs and I was asked to develop a proposal for a winter session.”
The winter session is scheduled to begin on Dec. 18 and end on Jan. 19, spanning around five weeks. This includes the holiday week where students will be able to do their online work, though professors won’t be responding to e-mail.
“They’re all classes that fulfill either two areas of the central curriculum or areas of high demand,” Clark said. “Since this is the first year, we’re only offering seven classes, and that includes Legal Environment, Issues in Biology, European History, Physics of Music, Comparative Politics, Introduction to Religious Studies and Introduction to Dramatic Literature.”
Students will take these classes online through Blackboard, Clark said. “You’d access them like you would a regular class except all of the work is there. Most faculty will have taped lectures that you can watch and are available there and there’s usually pretty regular discussion groups and things like that which are integrated in.”
While only seven courses are being offered so far, Clark is optimistic about the possibility of expanding the program to include more in the future.
“I think if it’s successful and there’s enough student demand, we can expand the courses,” Clark said. “In the summer, we offer around 40 to 50 classes and there’s demand for that, so if we find similar demand in the winter time then I could see it expanding.”
Despite taking place over the course of a few weeks, the classes will be treated as they normally would if they were being held over the course of a semester.
“These classes approximate what the expectations would be in a semester-long class, so you get the same credit,” Clark said. “But the work for a 14 week-long class is condensed into these five, so it’s definitely more intensive. It’s going to re- quire students to put aside two- to-three hours a day. Maybe not every day, but if you put off one day, that means you’re going to have more the next.”
One potential drawback making them as to online courses is the lack of student-professor interaction, which is something Clark interactive as hopes to mitigate in the upcoming winter session.
“All of the faculty that are teaching full-time SU faculty who have a lot of experience teaching online,” he said. “There’s a lot of emphasis put on making them as interactive as possible, because with an online class that’s the one thing you lose, that faculty interaction.”
Clark said an advertising campaign is being planned for later in the fall. Registration for the winter classes is scheduled to open the same time as registration for the spring semester.
He continued, “I think for some students who’ve had issues with taking central curriculum classes, this will be an asset,” Clark said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for both the institution and the students.”