Bottleneck courses Draft 1 J. Wilkes, 3/26/04
One of the most common complaints from undergraduates is about “bottleneck courses”: required courses, often prerequisites for core courses in their degree program, which are consistently hard to get into due to enrollment limits. In some cases, such courses are offered infrequently, and students are forced to wait a year or more before they can attempt to register again. Departments are unable to add sections or increase enrollment limits because of our chronic shortage of classroom space, and limited availability of faculty. Students may need to take several bottleneck courses, and then find themselves stymied by time schedule conflicts, which force them to postpone enrollment even though space may be available. They may soon be caught in a new double bind, as we introduce time-enrolled and total-credits limits for undergraduates. Nor is the problem limited to underclassmen; many seniors find themselves scrambling to get into courses required for their imminent graduation. On the Seattle campus, over 60 courses had 50 or more students denied registration in Autumn, 2003, and 24 courses have been identified by the Office of the Registrar as perennially overbooked. The attached table lists some of these bottleneck courses, which span a wide range of colleges and departments.
Bottleneck courses cause more than mere frustration. Students forced to extend their undergraduate careers by a year, or even one term, suffer a significant financial impact. Such unanticipated costs are not soon forgotten by the students - or their families. Worse, they may acquire the false impression that the University is not working hard enough to meet their needs, diminishing taxpayer support in a critical period for UW and state-supported higher education in general.
Offering bottleneck courses on a distance-learning basis can be a simple and cost-effective solution. Classroom space and schedule conflicts are no longer issues. Once course materials have been developed, and an effective course website has been created, faculty can devote more of their instructional time to mentoring students via online or phone conferencing, or email. Since students submit most materials electronically, it is often easier to delegate routine class-management and grading duties to staff or TAs than in a traditionally-taught course.
However, transition from the familiar course structure and teacher-student relationships of a classroom-based course to effective distance-learning means much more than simply writing website content. It is generally understood that converting a course to distance-learning requires faculty relief time for content development, just as it would be required to develop any new traditional-format course, but the story cannot end there. Faculty must also be given adequate time allowances and staff support to properly serve their students every term. While one office hour a week may suffice for a classroom course, where students have frequent opportunities for quick, informal questions and discussion, faculty teaching distance-learning courses must spend substantial amounts of time every day responding to email, course-chat postings, and telephone communications from students.
A number of initiatives at UW help faculty create distance-learning courses, or adapt existing courses. For example, Stephen Kerr (Assoc. Dean in the College of Education) won the UWEO 2004 Faculty Award for Distinguished Contributions to Lifetime Learning Award in part for his role in creating the UW The Center for Research and Development on Distance Learning (CRDDL). Jonathan Brock (Assoc. Prof., Evans School) developed The Electronic Hallway, an online repository of teaching and curriculum materials for faculty teaching public administration, public policy, and related subjects. The innovative UW Catalyst program has of course been a prolific source of tools and models for faculty adding web presence to their courses. These and other initiatives demonstrate that we already have, in-house at UW, cadres of experts and existing resources for distance learning course development.
However, such initiatives and programs can never replace the oldest but still most important element in all teaching: faculty effort. As many studies have shown, the common mantra that “distance learning is cheaper” is not correct. For most courses, distance learning is actually more expensive than traditional classroom delivery, in terms of faculty effort per student. Of course our motivation should not be to cut costs without attention to quality, any more than we can afford to ignore ways to reduce costs without impacting effectiveness. Still, any plan to relieve bottlenecks that affect undergraduate education through distance-learning alternatives must accept the need to budget realistically, if quality of instruction - our most important asset at UW - is to be preserved.
Table: Bottleneck courses identified by the Office of the Registrar (thanks are due to Mr. V. Johnson for this and other very valuable information).
A. Perennial bottleneck courses BIOL 180,200,220 CHEM 142,152,162 COM 201,202 ECON 200,201 English Composition MATH 111,112,120,124,125,126 PHYS 114,115,116,121,122,123
B. Courses with more than 100 registration denials in Autumn, 2003 (in descending order of number of denials)
College Dept Course College of Arts and Sciences SOC 275 College of Arts and Sciences COM 220 College of Arts and Sciences ART 190 College of Arts and Sciences COM 202 College of Arts and Sciences SOC 222 College of Arts and Sciences ENGL 131 College of Arts and Sciences MUSIC 185 College of Arts and Sciences C LIT 270 College of Arts and Sciences ENGL 111 College of Arts and Sciences ART 124 College of Architecture and Urban Planning ARCH 150 College of Arts and Sciences SOC 270 College of Arts and Sciences PHIL 100 College of Arts and Sciences CLAS 101 College of Arts and Sciences ART 140 College of Arts and Sciences COM 270 College of Arts and Sciences MUSIC 116 College of Arts and Sciences CHEM 162