\n<\/p>\n
Colleges on the typical semester schedule often have an intersession\u00a0also called a January term\u2014that fills some of the gap between the end of the fall and the start of the spring.\u00a0Intersessions typically last only a few weeks, if that, and they\u2019re intended to allow students to pick up a single class during time they otherwise wouldn\u2019t have any.\u00a0They can be particularly helpful for student athletes whose seasons dominate one semester or the other; moving some credits to the January term can allow students to take a slightly lighter load when they\u2019re competing.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll admit that I\u2019m a fan of intersessions.\u00a0Intersession courses tend to have much higher completion rates than semester courses.\u00a0Some of that may be self-selection, but I think most of it comes from a combination of single focus and a relative lack of time for life to get in the way.<\/p>\n
When I was an undergrad, intersession courses were different from the courses offered during the semesters. They were usually interdisciplinary and often fairly idiosyncratic. They were some of the best classes I had in college.<\/p>\n
But that was at a small liberal arts college that didn\u2019t have to worry about its credits transferring to other places.\u00a0In the community college setting, transferability matters, so the courses tend to be more compressed versions of the same courses that get taught in the long semesters.\u00a0In my perfect world, we\u2019d have the same curricular freedom that the tonier four-year places have, but that doesn\u2019t seem to be the direction of things.\u00a0Still, I have to admit that offering the plain-vanilla introductory gen eds works well for attracting \u201cvisiting\u201d students who are matriculated elsewhere but who are home over the break.\u00a0It allows them to pick up transferable credits at lower cost.\u00a0If our stuff got too idiosyncratic, we might lose that market.<\/p>\n
My current college is the first one I\u2019ve worked at in which intersession straddles the Christmas break. Everyplace else, it started right after New Year\u2019s, typically ending just before Martin Luther King day.\u00a0I\u2019m not sure why we straddle the break; I\u2019ll be curious to see its effect on success rates.\u00a0It seems like it would depress the enrollment of visiting students, which makes it all the more curious that we do it this way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, some questions for my wise and worldly readers.<\/p>\n
Have you had an intersession success story? Alternately, did something crash and burn?<\/p>\n
Have you noticed that certain kinds of courses fit the format better than others?\u00a0If so, which?<\/p>\n
And is there a good argument for having it straddle the break?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d love to hear responses via email at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com, or on Bluesky, where I\u2019m at @deandad.bsky.social. Thanks!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Colleges on the typical semester schedule often have an intersession\u00a0also called a January term\u2014that fills some of the gap between the end of the fall and the start of the spring.\u00a0Intersessions typically last only a few weeks, if that, and they\u2019re intended to allow students to pick up a single class during time they otherwise<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[13086,21002],"class_list":{"0":"post-38294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-courses","9":"tag-intersession"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}