Dennis Jerz' great Literacy Weblog alerted me to a new article up at Inside Higher Ed by Shari Wilson about the problems attached to night classes that meet for three hours, once a week, called "Once a Week is Not Enough". Wilson laments the lack of learning that happens in these longer, less-frequently-meeting classes. The crux of her argument is that there are "not enough practice-and-feedback loops to help students absorb, retain and apply information" in a class that meets once a week. Conversely, in more traditional courses, "students have a chance to replay the information in their heads and practice. With the guiding hand of the instructor, they can get even more direction and be assured that they are 'getting it.'"

At Seton Hill, we offer a large number of these courses, and our facilities often seem to be running at full steam 24 hours a day. Part of the need for these one-shot classes stems from scheduling conflicts that I would call "displacement effects": art students, for example, take studios that last all afternoon long, displacing their available time for "traditional" courses to the morning and evening slots. Other displacing effects would include athletics and activities held in the afternoon, nine-to-five jobs held by more and more of our traditional-aged students (in addition to the returning adults), and certification program conflicts (almost half our students at Seton Hill, for example, are enrolled in an Education Certification program, which functions like a double-major, forcing students to take overloads and pack those classes into their schedule whenever they can if they hope to graduate in four years). On top of the displacement effects that give rise to a need for these courses are some of the other motives Wilson mentions, such as acquiring adjuncts who can only teach at night, or adopting a consumerist model of accessibility, that markets a quick and easy education to the workforce by hosting classes during what is ostensibly their "time off."

It's also a way to maximize the use of the physical plant, since classes would otherwise lie dormant in the evening. Once night courses populate a calendar, only an extremely radical revision of the schedule could change the system, and it would require adding a lot more full-time faculty to a campus' roster and perhaps even building new classrooms -- an expensive proposition. So I think most campuses that have these systems are stuck with them, to some degree.

I inevitably teach one of these three hour long night courses a term. I acknowledge that the difficulties that Wilson points to are very real -- and that it takes a certain stamina from student and teacher alike to succeed in them -- but there are also many benefits to teaching these classes and a host of strategies a teacher can adopt to make them work as best as possible.

The primary benefit of teaching a once-a-week, three-hour course is mostly evident in the amount of time you are given to work with. Having three hours allows both more flexibility and greater focus. Obviously, you have more flexibility in a class with three hours, rather than fifty minutes; if a class discussion is going well and you want to extend it, you can do so. You can commit larger blocks of time to group work, writing exercises, than you normally would, and even screen films or enact skits, and still have time for discussion afterward. It's great for writer's workshops or seminars where entire books are being discussed. I find having all that time quite useful; nothing frustrates me more in a traditional class than having to cut something productive off because of the (virtual) "bell."

As a writer, I find that teaching a once-per-week class benefits me by opening up my schedule so I have more time to write early in the day all week. I'm a morning writer -- using the first few hours of the day to focus on my own writing (the secret to my success in this regard was the realization that developing my own writing is just as important as my students', and so I try to spend as much time working on my scholarship as I do grading student papers -- and I find it easier to write in the morning (and who wants to start their day grading papers, anyway?)). Luckily, my campus usually allows me the freedom to not have any classes until 11am for this purpose. I also can spend those three extra "workday" hours on errands or class prep. Jerz and Wilson rightly note that teaching a night class often means that you get students who can't attend normal office hours, and demand extra "night" time from a teacher, since they work during the week. But I find that office hours can be adjusted tactically: hosting one office hour a week in the late afternoon (circa 4:30 or 5) can often accommodate these students as well as other traditional students who have classes during the "banking hours" when most faculty hold their usual office hours. The only drawback, really, is that fewer colleagues, staff and campus services are available at that time. But I have "regular" office hours for those needs, too. Teachers can also host "virtual" office hours and help these 9-to-5ers via e-mail or online chats.

When you first design a once-a-week class, one problem immediately arises in regards to organizing the content. Because the class meets once a week, it seems like you will have to cram what would normally be three meetings worth of material into one session. Some teachers even rotely divvy the three hours up into three lockstep units. Inevitably, as Wilson notes, teachers wind up dropping readings and assignments along the way and "shortchanging" the class, compared to what students in a thrice-per-week classroom are getting. Teaching a process-based course can suffer, if, say, drafting and revision happens in class -- if you only have 10 to 15 meetings a term, it's hard to plan serial learning. But if one adjusts by trying to teach depth rather than breadth, these problems fade away. When I teach a night class once a week, I shape it so that a lot of the reading, screening, peer-editing, and information-gathering/-digesting happens outside of class. I've used mandatory discussion board work outside of class to keep students interacting during the week (though this doesn't always work). I might set up "study groups" that encourage the students to do group work on their own combined schedules. Students come to the meeting prepared to discuss, with questions written down or a reading journal and an already-read book in their packs. When I teach film, I often assign screenings outside of the class and schedule a time slot outside of class where work study students can show the films. The idea is to "displace" as much as you can into homework without compromising the course. That means making the night class less focused on information and in-class application and more focused on process and reflection. I design the class so that individuals are doing stuff outside of class that they can't wait to share with others when we meet to pow-wow about it weekly. This approach also might mean retooling some of the course content so that it can be applied to the world outside the classroom, where students might be asked to do more homework "out in the world" rather than book learning. I might assign a paper that has students write about an observation they make in their workplace, rather than write about an article I have them read about work.

And I adjust my own work schedule accordingly, too: I often have paper deadlines later in the week, so that I can collect them and comment or grade them before the following class session. I might e-mail a handout or reading to the entire class in one batch. And I make heavy use of the reserve room, for distributing reading material I might otherwise pass out in the classroom. Sometimes, if students need more hands-on direction, I might cancel a regular class session and instead host individual or "study group" conferences spread out at different times across the week.

Teaching a three hour session can be "exhausting" for teacher and student alike, but it's important to schedule breaks (one at the midpoint, minimum) during these classes. Aside from providing intellectual and physical relief, I find these breaks helpful to mentally shift gears and move to a new topic, and I usually plan my courses around the break. Even so, sometimes it's difficult. After a full day of classes and faculty meetings and office hours, it can be almost surreal when you leave campus at ten at night, under the moonshine and the sound of crickets. I try to schedule my day so I'm not in from 8am till 10pm, but when those days have to happen, I'm sure to take it as easy as I can the following day. It's often more difficult to teach a morning class the day after a night class than it is to teach the night classes themselves. I make sure my weekly grading is done with as much discipline as I can muster, so that I'm not madly prepping or racing to grade papers to return the next morning. As with all teaching tasks, time management is crucial to organizing your life around a night class. That's something that students, too, need to learn and I do spend class time talking about study strategies for taking a night class, particularly if I have freshman taking one for the first time. I also make sure that I remain just as demanding and challenging of students in my night classes as I am in the "traditional" daily classroom. Sometimes it's not the neophyte freshman, but the student who has had a number of night classes in the past that were mismanaged (often, unfortunately, by new adjuncts that come and go in the dead of night) or treated as "education light" who are the ones that carry the wrong expectations when they enter the room, and it takes a little work to get them to respect our time together as a meaningful educational experience. If a student is having problems staying alert for three hours, or keeping up with homework, I take pains to conference with them privately early in the term to try to coach them a little in the skills it takes to succeed in a once-a-week course. I might compare it to going to church, or other rituals that often only happen once a week, but which can also be life-altering.

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