Introduction
Given budgetary constraints and our continued desire to offer a range of courses (covering different areas of study) for our graduate and undergraduate students, in the future, we are planning to offer 400/500 level split courses. We piloted several split-level courses this academic year, and several faculty members in early-period areas have been teaching these for some time now.
Scheduling/teaching load:
- For the purposes of teaching load, these courses will “count” as a graduate-level course.
- They will be capped at 15 students.
- We assume these courses will typically enroll more undergraduate than graduate students (expected ratio would be 10 undergrad and 5 grad), but this is not set in stone and some split classes may draw more heavily from the graduate side. The distribution is flexible.
- The majority of the courses, though not all of them, will count towards our major’s Capstone requirement. This means that the courses will also draw students in the honors program.
- When faculty propose graduate courses, these proposals will be for 400/500 split courses. The DGS may pull out 1-2 of those splits to run as a standalone, 500-level course, based on predicted enrolments.
Benefits of split courses:
- We can continue to provide broad coverage of fields.
- We can continue to offer a relatively robust graduate-level curriculum.
- We can offer more capstone seminars, making it easier for undergraduate students to register for seminars they are interested in (and ideally have some background in)
- We have talked in the past about differentiating between introductory and advanced graduate classes. The split format can help graduate students acquire grounding in new areas, and provides an opportunity to revisit and reinforce foundational concepts and methods.
- Undergraduate students will have the chance to learn from higher level students, and to partake in seminar style courses.
Some challenges:
- Meeting the academic needs of both groups at the same time, both in class discussion, in reading load, and in assignment design
- Having undergraduates feel intimidated, underprepared, excluded, or silenced
- Having graduate students feel like they are being called on to teach when they ought to be students (this is also a contractual problem – we probably shouldn’t call it “teaching”)
- Balancing reading load: what is too little and what is too much?
Some lessons learned / best practices:
- Work hard to develop community and a sense of collective belonging. For instance, students can introduce themselves in different ways at the start of many class sessions, not just once.
- Sometimes break up the course according to level. Have graduate students work on one project (or set of questions) and undergraduates work on another, and then have each group present.
- Have graduate students work on a course glossary, defining or contextualizing key terms, and sharing that work with undergraduate students.
- Have graduate students introduce readings, authors, or develop discussion questions.
- Develop different final assignments for the undergraduate students and the graduate students.
We hope to continue to collaborate on this new course structure, developing a shared archive of best practices, syllabi, and assignments.