End of Credit Hour in Sight? (Article)

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by BlackBird, Oct 31, 2003.

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  1. BlackBird

    BlackBird Member

    Academics Make Case to End Credit Hour
    Thu Oct 30, 4:10 AM ET Add U.S. National
    By STEVE GIEGERICH, AP Education Writer
    U.S. National - AP
    Retrieved from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=20&u=/ap/20031030/ap_on_re_us/credit_hours on 10/31/2003


    Developed about a century ago, the credit hour has become a building block of American academic life.

    It is used to calculate faculty salaries, to determine the level of public money funneled to institutions and to establish a timetable for graduating with a degree.

    But some academic experts now say the credit hour is a relic in a high-tech world with ever-more nontraditional students and learning methods.

    "Having time- and space-bound measures that equate learning with a certain place and a certain time is clearly outmoded. And yet it is the DNA embedded in both the academic and funding system," said Jane Wellman, coeditor with Thomas Ehrlich of "How the Student Credit Hour Shapes Higher Education," a recently released collection of essays on the credit hour.

    That system, she says, is increasingly at odds with modern teaching methods: More students are developing their own programs of study. An increasing number take courses online and away from the traditional classroom. And, unlike a time when students generally enrolled and graduated from the same institution, nearly two-thirds of all undergraduate degrees today are awarded to transfer students.

    Experts say such factors have created a need for more flexibility in measuring students' work.

    "Let's assess what the students have actually learned," said Clara Lovett, the president of the Washington-based American Association for Higher Education.

    "It shouldn't matter where or how they learned it, nor should it matter that some students are going to master certain kinds of knowledge more rapidly than other students."

    High schools started using the credit hour during the first decade of the 20th century. Then as now, the quality of high schools varied significantly, and the credit hour evolved as a way to determine whether students were ready for college by measuring how much time they spent in a class per week.

    Within 10 years, colleges started embracing the concept. That set in motion a shift from standard curriculums — in which schools dictated each student's course of study — to the current system that allows students to accumulate enough credit hours to graduate through a combination of required and elective courses.

    Once adopted, the credit hour became a driving force in higher education.

    It presented students with a specific time frame in which they were expected to complete course work, usually one semester. And it supplied college administrations with a business model for scheduling, payroll and budgeting. Salary calculations were based on how many credit hours an instructor taught, for example.

    But Wellman and Ehrlich, a senior scholar with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argue in their book that using time to measure 21st century learning is ineffective.

    The authors agree with Lovett that measurements that determine what a student has learned — and not how long a student took to learn it — are more effective.

    "You don't have to have a time-based system," said Wellman, a senior associate with the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

    Some experts say "competency-based" education programs are the best alternative to the credit hour structure.

    Such programs, growing in popularity along with online education, replace the traditional semester with a structure that encourages students to work at their own pace on self-generated curriculums.

    "It has given me the ability to take charge of my own education and to have the flexibility to study what I wanted without having to adhere to standard requirements or forms of learning," said J.P. Hitesman, a second-year student at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass.

    Like other competency-based programs, Hampshire College uses faculty "assessments" to review course work, instead of the standard grading system.

    The president of the New College of Florida — a public institution where students fulfill a self-designed "academic contract" each year — acknowledged that the system demands independence and discipline from students. It isn't for everyone, he said.

    "Some kids need more structure," Gordon Michalson said in a phone interview from his office in Sarasota.

    Lovett said the academic community also has resisted wholesale changes because that would require a major overhaul of the U.S. college structure.

    "If you start moving one piece, you have to worry about the rest of the system," Lovett said. "And that's why educators have been reluctant to find a substitute."

    ___

    On the Net:

    The Institute for Higher Education Policy:

    http://www.ihep.org
     
  2. MarkIsrael@aol.com

    [email protected] New Member

    I don't think it's a good idea to post entire copyrighted news articles here without permission. It's OK to post an excerpt or summary and a pointer.

    > "Let's assess what the students have actually learned," said
    > Clara Lovett
    [...]. "It shouldn't matter where or how they
    > learned it
    [...]."

    This may be an infringement of Excelsior College's registered servicemark, "What you know is more important than where or how you learned it."® :D
     
  3. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    I doubt that this will happen anytime soon.
    UCSC recently adopted the credit hour system and I read somewhere that UK universities are considering adopting this system.
     

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