Senior year of college is nothing like senior year of high school. In high school, you save the simplest classes you need to fill your credits for last and coast through easy As. College is the opposite, filled with last-minute upper-division requirements and highly rigorous concluding content. The most difficult requirements for graduation should never be offered in a single-section intensive format.
UCCS has several intensive formats that squish a semester’s worth of content into a shorter time frame. Session A and Session B classes use up eight weeks in the first or second half of a semester. Four-week intensives put all the material into just a month. Pre-terms take two weeks before the start of a semester to teach an entire course.
During the first four weeks of this semester, I had to take two online 4000-level four-week intensives and a Session A at once. Because I am graduating in May, I had no choice but to take these intensives at the same time, since they fulfilled two of my final five requirements.
I had an entire module due every day, complete with several long readings, lectures and assignments. I spent at least seven hours every day, including weekends, cooped up in my apartment working through modules.
In my major, five of my six upper-division graduation requirements were only offered in one section, online, four-week intensives or pre-terms. These classes were generally manageable until this semester — that workload would make even the strongest academic soldier cry.
For a girl with two jobs in a club sport with pressing social and familial commitments, the workload with two intensives at the same time was completely unbearable. At one point, halfway through my four weeks, I suffered a severe crash-out that had me bedridden for 24 hours. I felt my emotional state crumble under the pressure of performing well in class and my other commitments.
I came down with Norovirus during the third week of classes. I emailed my professor to ask for an extension on assignments, but after 10 hours of waiting for a response, I tried to push through my 102-degree fever to take notes. After hardly comprehending a word over an hour of painful notetaking, I put my assignments away, fearful my grades would slip.
Eventually, my professor responded, granting me the extension, but I never caught up from missing one day of work. I spent the following weekend scrambling to turn in my late assignments. From that point forward, I devoted all my free waking hours to classes, putting my social life and responsibilities (cleaning my house, buying groceries) on the back burner.
I had no choice — if I wanted to graduate, I would have to deal with the intensity. And I did, but I would never wish that experience on any perfectionist student like me.
These four-week classes never yield long-term knowledge, anyway. It’s been three weeks since my four-week intensives concluded, and I couldn’t tell you more than three facts about each class.
Session A and B classes feel more reasonable, but shortening 16 weeks of content into four makes it seem like I am missing valuable understanding. I cannot understand how it is possible to offer the same depth of instruction online in four weeks that I get out of a 16-week in-person class.
Intensive courses, especially when offered online, make it difficult to build connections with professors. I have an easy time building relationships with professors in class because of my engagement in discussions. Online, I still give my best effort, but I am not confident my professors see me as anything other than just some online student.
When my academic advisor doesn’t know which classes will be offered in what formats, it is almost impossible to know when graduate requirements will be offered in intensives. My advisor always told me I was on the right track in previous semesters, but I still wound up with an intensive-on-intensive workload.
I am sure the shortened format works for some people, probably for those that can devote long hours and steady attention spans to these classes. My attention span lasts maybe 20 minutes if I’m lucky. I struggle to sit down and lock in for hours on end, so these classes cause me more stress and frustration than classes broken down over longer periods.
UCCS shouldn’t completely get rid of these online intensives. People who want the fast-paced, in-depth learning format should have access to them. However, intensives shouldn’t be the only option for graduation requirements.
To cater to different learning styles, graduation requirements should have both intensive online and full-length in-person formats.