A One-Course Study Plan

Abstract

IN THE spring of I 93 I a group of the faculty of Hiram College petitioned the board of trustees through the president of the College for permission to conduct a summer school under the name of the College. The administration was invited to provide such supervision as it saw fit. It was agreed in the petition that the session would be without expense to the College, the remuneration of the instructors to come from the tuition fees after all expenses of the session had been cared for. This petition the board approved, with instructions to the president and the faculty to take all necessary precautions to assure the maintenance of high academic standards. The request presented by the faculty members, however, did not grow out of a desire to duplicate the summer-school program already in effect in hundreds of colleges. The faculty in their informal discussions had been talking of ways of avoiding the piecemealness of our educational system whereby a student is asked to divide his interest among five or six courses. In these conversations the question, Would it be possible so to organize the curriculum and time schedule that a student might enroll for a single course, concentrating all of his attention upon that single subject for a limited time? had been raised. In answer to that question there came the plan of organization, the one-course study plan, which the faculty members asked permission to try. Under the one-course study plan each student was invited to enroll for a single course continuing for the six-weeks duration of the summer session. In that period the student was expected to cover with thoroughness the material usually offered in a three-hour course running for two semesters. For this work satisfactorily finished the student received six hours of academic credit. The enrollment in no course was to exceed ten, thereby assuring personal contact between the student and the instructor. The instructor was free to make such arrangements for meeting his group as he saw fit, using lecture or recitation-discussion periods, seminar groups, field trips, or individual conferences. The enrollment that first summer numbered eighty-one. The course offerings included seven courses offered throughout the six weeks for six hours of credit, and ten courses offered for a three-weeks period for three hours of credit. That first summer the