I recently spoke with a student who has two reading intensive courses this term. It is typical that each class requires around 200 pages of reading in between each class period, along with other things like papers, watching films, etc. From Tuesday to Thursday, she is often assigned 400 pages between the two courses. She likes the material and loves the courses, but she has trouble keeping up. She is doing her best to manage her time and is much more efficient and focused than she had been in high school. She does not want to cheat the reading by going too fast, and she wants to fully absorb the content. But she has trouble keeping up with the pace. Maybe better advising would have placed her in courses with more balanced loads, but a story like this still raises the issue of how much content is enough, and at what point we loose effectiveness by requiring too much. After a prolonged period of this, a student will take on different habits of reading. I have some concern that one of the things that we might be teaching is a form of reading that is quick and superficial. I would hate to see a student make the transition from careful reading to a habit of skimming just in order to keep up.
I spoke with another student who contrasted two courses. One was in her area of strongest interest- a course that was seemingly made for her. The other was of peripheral interest to her. The class in her primary area had large amounts of reading, and she struggled to keep up. In the other course the reading was targeted and more focused. At the end of the term, she was surprised by how much more she retained from the course with less reading. Even though it was not in her strongest area of interest, she felt that the class had a greater influence on her, that she got more out of it.
In previous newsletters I have raised the issues of distracted reading. Here, I want to extend that to the general issue of load and pace, in a way that could apply to any course. This applies to content and requirements in general- not just to reading. I don’t advocate coddling students by making courses easier and leaving out important content. As a teacher, I am experimenting with how to be demanding and keeping high expectations while establishing a pace that allows for focus and depth. I have spoken with some colleagues who have reduced the reading load or other requirements for their courses. In general, they don’t see this as giving in or expecting less from their students. Instead, they think that they have found ways to get more out of their assignments by not overloading. Each of us sets our own standards. But in this open forum on teaching, I wanted to raise an issue that I see in my own teaching, and that I hear about from students and colleagues.