What is the difference between a class that requires 12 books of reading and a three-page paper every week, and a class requiring five books and two papers for the entire semester?
Nothing. That is, if you’re reading an ASU transcript.
Both classes are HST 456 classes. The former, a class I’m currently taking, meets for three hours once a week for intensive, analytical discussion. The other class, taught by another professor, is taken online.
My class has six people in it. Those who complain that small classes and special attention won’t be found at ASU apparently haven’t looked hard enough.
Or maybe they did, but preferred the easier alternative.
I was shocked when I walked into class last week and discovered I had been placed in such an intimate setting. Sensing my incredulity, a classmate joked (before our professor arrived) that everyone else dropped out after reviewing the instructor’s record on Ratemyprofessors.com.
In the fairness of full disclosure, my class is an honors class, while the online section is not. But the phenomenon of same-course discrepancies is something most every ASU student will encounter at some point in his or her stay at the New American University.
At lunch last week, two of my friends were discussing their online media class, comparing notes about assignments, the professors and grading procedures. One has a “very friendly and easygoing professor” who seems to not believe in homework outside of class, while the other has a tough, veteran faculty member who expects students to be able to reinvent the Web.
This issue invariably comes up in every department that has more than one professor teaching the same class. It has always been this way, and it likely will always be the same.
But the thing that has changed is the student response, as noted by my history classmate. Thanks to the handy Ratemyprofessors.com, students are being more judicious in their class selections than ever, bobbing and weaving around those professors who garnered sub-3.0 ratings on the “easiness” scale.
College students used to take more chances. They had to.
With a Web page pointing the way, many students are manipulating their schedules to feature only the easiest of the cakewalk teachers. It’s like fishing —for easy classes, that is — with dynamite.
Worse, such habits seem to provide an incentive to faculty to make their classes easier. Otherwise, as seen with my history class, fewer students will enroll.
Everything we ever do anymore haunts us ceaselessly on the Internet.
This is, sadly, true for our professors, too.
But two weeks in, I can say I’m satisfied with my decision to stay in my HST 456 class. I have a three-page paper due every week, prepackaged with hundreds of pages of dense reading, but it’s been a fun, thought-provoking and unique experience so far.
Dustin is busy reading his history books. Reach him at dustin.volz@asu.edu.
