Intensive Courses—Requirements and Design

 

A number of seminaries, such as Luther Seminary and Bethel Seminary, are developing intensive courses, which bring students on-campus for face-to-face learning for one to two weeks at a time. Instead of 3 hours per week for fifteen weeks, an intensive course might meet up-to 8 hours per day over the course of 5 days.

Designing and teaching courses in this format presents a number of significant challenges. Intensives are often designed to meet on-campus residency requirements of degree programs as a part of accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS); those requirements significantly shape what is possible in an intensive course. Given the accreditation and calendar requirements, how can we create intensive courses that are engaging learning experiences in their own right, not just 15 week semester courses stuffed into a single week?

How did we get here in the first place?

In order to design an intensive course, it is helpful to understand the accreditation requirements framing the course model. The accreditation standards that ATS provide for the Master of Divinity degree require that no less than the equivalent of one year of study take place face-to-face on the school’s campus.

Because MDiv education expects regular and substantive student-faculty interaction to achieve the stipulated learning outcomes, this interaction requires that at least one year of full-time academic study or its equivalent shall be completed at the main campus of the school awarding the degree or at an extension site of the institution that has been approved for MDiv degree-granting status. (ATS 2012 Educational and Degree Program Standards, A.3.1.3, p. G-41)

Often this one-year requirement is interpreted as 1/3 of the total course credits required for the degree. Since distributed learning programs are often designed to serve students who find it difficult to move family and home to a new location to attend seminary, this requirement presents a program design challenge. To meet the needs of these students and accreditation requirements, many schools have turned to creating intensives as a means to finding a middle ground to provide the required on-campus learning time and to make it possible for students to not need move to campus to complete the required on-campus courses.

In order for a course to count as an on-campus course, a majority of the instructor led contact hours for that course must be delivered face-to-face on the seminary campus.

The credits awarded for a hybrid or blended distance education course will count toward residency for those degrees that require residential instruction only if the majority of instructor-directed learning occurs in situations where both faculty and students are in person on the school’s main campus or at an extension approved for the school to offer the full degree. (ATS 2012 Educational and Degree Program Standards, ES.4.2.19, p. G-34).

Credit Hour Mathematics

So how do we calculate the needed instructor-directed learning for an intensive course? If we use Carnegie units to calculate credit hours as many accrediting agencies do, we can calculate the amount of required instructor-directed learning. In Carnegie units, 1 semester credit hour should be the equivalent to 1 hour of in-class instructor-directed instruction per week + 2 hours of student-directed-learning (such as reading or writing) per week, taking place over a 15 week semester term (See also how this is presented by the Higher Learning Commission, a Federal Regional Accrediting Agency FDCR.A.10.020). Written as an equation, it would look like this:

1 cr. = 15 hrs instructor-directed learning + 30 hrs. student-directed learning = 45 hrs. of total learning.

Following this math, a typical 3 credit semester based course would require 45 hours of instructor led learning and 90 hours of student led for a total of 135 hours of learning. To meet the ATS requirement for on-campus instructor-directed learning, a 3 credit course would require a minimum of 22.5 hours of instructor-directed learning which occurs on the seminary campus. In order to meet credit hour equivalencies for total work required, our 3 credit intensive course is still required to meet the total learning time equivalent of 135 hours. If we have 22.5 hours of on-campus instructor-directed learning we will still need the equivalent of 112.5 hours of learning that must occur online or as student-directed learning.

My Head Hurts Already, Now What?

So now we have narrowed some of our design requirements for our 3 credit intensive course. We must have the equivalent of 135 hours of total learning of which not less than 22.5 hours must be face-to-face on campus. While we cannot possibly fit all 135 hours into a one week on-campus course, we can fit 22.5-45 hours of instructor led learning into an intensive course in which students are on campus for a week.

In order to meet the needs of the remaining required learning time, we can design online units that students that will occur before and after the on-campus component. By creating a course structure with on-campus and online components, we can design courses that meet the scheduling needs of students and the credit hour requirements of ATS. Let’s explore how we might design a 3 credit course as an intensive using this formula.

Designing the On Campus Components

For our 3 credit course we will need to have at least 22.5 hours of on-campus, instructor-led learning, although we may have more. For the sake of our students, let’s say that we want the on-campus component to occur over one calendar week so students can limit their time away from home. How shall we design the on-campus components of the course when we will have students in class for 5 or more hours a day during our 5 day week?

Intensives are intense. With longer class hour times meeting sequentially over a few days and with limited time between class sessions, intensives create full schedules. Not only is it intense on the amount of learning that will happen over a short period of time, intensives can be physically taxing as well. It can be downright painful to sit in a standard classroom chair for more than an hour much less to sit in it for 5 hours a day for 5 days straight.

How might we design our class sessions that make the most of the learning time on-campus? Might the class meet in multiple locations on campus during class time to provide different perspectives on the learning? Could the class time have components might include learning in the chapel, the library, or off-site at a nearby congregation? How might we structure class time with a variety of learning modes including faculty presentation, group work, discussion, individual exploration, and student-presentations?

Because students are spending so much time in class during the on-campus portions of intensives, they have less room during the week for reading and writing between class sessions. This will also require some creative thinking. Large portions of the reading and writing might happen during the online components of the course, but there may also be time for some shorter reading and writing pieces that could happen during the week while students are on campus.

In order to reframe our thinking for design, it might be helpful to think of the on-campus component, not so much as a squished semester and lamenting the loss of time. What if instead we thought of it as a 1-2 week retreat of focused learning? How might we use that intensive time to go deep in a subject in ways we can’t do meeting only a few hours during the week?

Designing the Online Components

Once we have a sense of how the on-campus components will be structured, we can work on structuring the online components of our course. In the online components, we will need to provide the remainder of the required learning time equivalents that were not addressed in the on-campus component of the course. The online portions of the course can be great opportunities to have students engage in course readings, watch video presentations from the instructors, work on projects, or engage the course topic by exploring a context that is close to their home.

By using online units before the on-campus portion, we can help students prepare for the face-to-face work of the intensive. Similarly, we can use online units after the on-campus component to invite students to reflect on their learning, to work on course projects, and to apply their learning in context. Care will need to be taken to work out when the online units for the course should begin and end so that students are not trying to do their online units for their upcoming intensives while taking finals for their current courses.

Closing

It is nearly impossible to fit 135 hours of learning into one or two weeks on campus. However, by using online learning components as a part of intensive courses, we can not only meet accreditation requirements, but we can also create learning activities that help students connect their learning from their campus to their local contexts. Intensives are challenging for students, teachers, and designers.

Rather than trying to cram fifteen weeks of activities into a 1-2 week time period, intensives invite us to create new designs for our courses that are tailored to the unique structure and schedules of the courses. By using both online and on-campus components we can work to create courses that provide dynamic learning experiences and meet accreditation requirements.

Photo Credit:  “VFS Summer Intensive Programs 2012” by vancouverfilmschool – CC by 2.0

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