Scheduling season is coming up, and students are beginning to browse the course catalog for classes to take during the spring semester. An increasingly popular class option for students is seven-week courses.
Seven-week courses give students an opportunity for shorter class periods while still getting an adequate amount of credits and information. Generally, seven-week courses range from 0.5 to three credit hours, giving students an option for the extra credits they need to fill their schedule.
Ohio University offers multiple seven-week courses throughout the school year. During the fall semester, the first set of courses occurred from Aug. 26 through Oct. 11, while the second set of seven-week courses is currently going on. They began Oct. 14 and carry through the end of the semester.
Maureen Smith, a freshman studying chemical engineering, began her first semester of college with “Engineering and Technology: Career Orientation,” a half-credit hour class designed to teach engineering students how to build a resume and network.
“I feel like you could make it a whole semester,” Smith said. “But, you would be repeating a lot of the same stuff. (With) the amount of information, (the class) really only needs to be about seven weeks.”
Smith also appreciates the adjustment to her schedule in the middle of the semester. She considers the change one of the benefits of the seven-week courses.
“It felt good to complete something,” said Smith. “It's nice going into the second half of the semester with less to do.”
Natalie Moog, a sophomore studying marketing, recently began taking a seven-week course for the second half of the semester. She is taking Career Management Strategies, a class required for students majoring in marketing.
The class aims to give insight into using platforms such as LinkedIn and Handshake and interview strategies among other career-building tactics. Moog is looking to get an internship soon and feels the class will help her get the experience she needs to apply.
“I live in Columbus,” said Moog. “Ideally, it would be nice to have an internship there, since it's a hot spot for a lot of companies. I think I would gain a lot from an in-person internship, as well.”
Graduate students also take seven-week courses. Some graduate majors are structured to only take short courses. Jennifer Stevens, an Associate Professor in the School of Accountancy, describes the logistics of the structure.
“We have found this to be an extremely efficient and effective way for students to learn,” Stevens said. “This allows those students to really focus on just two areas instead of four but do deep dives in those two areas over the seven weeks.”
Stevens teaches two seven-week courses of her own, and there is a strategy in place to give students the most out of the seven weeks she has with them.
“We have designed all of our seven-week courses around seven modules,” Stevens said. “You do one module a week, and each module will have its own learning goal for the week and its own set of learning objectives for the week, and then we have learning activities in order to meet those learning objectives and the overall learning goals.”
Overall, seven-week courses benefit students and faculty members. Though the time span is shortened, the classes leave plenty of room in students’ schedules. It seems students and faculty will utilize these courses for years to come.
