Cranky Academic Politics Last Minute Academic Calendar Change Blogging...

One of the large number of furschlugginger Vice Provosts writes:

Dear Colleagues:

EVCP Breslauer and I wish to inform you of an important change in the Fall 2009 academic calendar: the last three podium days of the semester (December 7-9, 2009) will be converted to a Reading/Review/Recitation Period. This is being done... in keeping with the recommendations of the Joint Task Force on Exams, which addressed many complex long-term challenges during year-long deliberations that culminated in a May 15, 2009 report to EVCP Breslauer.... There will be no traditional classes or lectures... nor should instructors introduce any new material....

We know this gives relatively short notice to faculty members with completed syllabi for Fall 2009 courses, but we think it important to make this change at this time. We hope any inconvenience involved in revising syllabi is far outweighed by the obvious benefits of this change for faculty members as well as students. The Reading/Review/Recitation (RRR) Period has long been sought by students who want more time to prepare for final exams.... It has also been requested by a growing number of faculty members and Academic Senate committees for both pedagogical and policy reasons. In addition to the pedagogical advantages... implementation of RRR days... will bring other benefits... including... completion of the spring semester a week earlier....

Though faculty members are expected to be available to students, they may not require students to attend any review sessions or a particular presentation time as part of their final grade. Additional guidelines on acceptable uses of the RRR Period will follow in the near future, but we wanted to alert you now regarding the change....

The remainder of recommendations from the Joint Task Force on Exams will be implemented in Spring 2010. Though there is not space in this letter to address all the changes in the offing, more detail can be seen in the full text of the final report referenced earlier. We will issue comprehensive implementation plans for Spring 2010 in the next few weeks...

It's Friday.

The semester begins next Wednesday.

We lecturers have already struck our deals with TAs about how much they are going to grade and when.

The syllabuses have (for the most part) already been printed (he says, looking at a stack of 350 in his knapsack), the lectures outlined, and the powerpoints designed.

This isn't as bad for me--my big course this fall is a TTh course, so I lose only one day of instruction, the 8th--as for people teaching MW courses, but it is annoying to have sprung on one with such... ample notice.

I must confess that I am surprised to be told of the "obvious benefits of this change," of the "pedagogical advantages," and of the importance of helping "students who want more time to prepare for final exams." Had I thought that providing students with more time to prepare for final exams was a worthy goal, I would have cut my lecture schedule (and my reading assignments) short by a week long ago, and used the last two formal class sessions as open office hours: simply sitting on the table in front of whoever wanted to show up, answering questions about the material, gossiping about the university, and trying to put the course in the broader framework of a liberal education for a free society in the twenty-first century.

The fact that we faculty have, collectively, not done this--that we have taught new material up through the very last day--tells me that providing students with an extra three days to start reviewing the material is not in fact an "obvious benefit" with "pedagogical advantages."

The fact that this change ws not announced last May tells me that it was not an "obvious benefit" then either.

Sigh.

Of course, my real problem is that I was already going to go over the end of the semester--I had slotted Thursday December 10 for a "review" that would introduce new material: the Stern report, and the prospects for the renewed importance of Malthus one way or another over the next two centuries, and was going to do my review by coming to the section leaders' various reviews over the following week--the exam, after all, isn't until December 18. But I don't want to leave Malthus, global warming, and the financial crisis and the likely end of the neoliberal policy order on the cutting room floor. So I'll have to reach further back into the syllabus and find other things to cut instead...

And the state of California--even now--is investing too much in these people for me to think that cutting back on the amount they have to do this semester is a good idea. This is Berkeley, after all: this is the finest public university in the world.

I guess I'll take the Harvard dodge: Have a large gap between the end of classes and the exam? Fill it by making the students write another big paper--that's good for them. So now the question is how big a paper, and what should it be on?...