Multitasking and the course system
I've been asked numerous times by friends and family "What do you find most difficult about University". Perhaps it's not a surprise to fellow student reading this blog, but to those outside post-secondary academia I it might. Frequent study topic changes are the hardest part of University for me. Rarely is there a day that I can devote entirely to one project, or even one subject. We students quickly learn how to "switch gears" efficiently, leaving what we can behind and freeing as much random access memory as possible, while (hopefully) retaining all our previous knowledge in some sort of long term storage. Personally I find if very hard to immerse myself far enough into a single subject, to the point that I really start learning things, without being suddenly drawn in another direction.
If two hours can waste two weeks, then you would think students have no hope. Are we students the equivalent of "palm pilots"? Have we become masters of short term problem solving and fact retension, without a real plan extending beyond our next battery charge? How much does course switching hurt students? Could it be as bad as this task switching example? I doubt it, but it is an interesting thing to consider. (Here's some more from Joel on it.)
Although multitasking is a great skill to have, in a school-context a greater skill may be the ability to avoid it. By purposefully grouping your weekly assignments/course work into certain days we would be undoubtably more productive.
Consider an even more radical, though probably not entirely unique idea. What if we took the thirty five 50-minute classes for each course and grouped them. Effectively creating 5 'micro' terms every semester. Each would last about 3 weeks and would contain about 30 hours of instruction (3 per day). This would leave time for 10 assignments. Each about 5 hours in length; the average time for most courses. That would equate to about 8 hours of work a day. Not-at-all unreasonable. Fewer assignments would allow for longer length. Courses such as CS241 and their 10+ hours/week assignments would be reigned in. Other slacking courses would be forced to up their workload, for fear of ridicule as being under-developed.
Nov 30, -0001
3:00 am
I don't know about you, but I find switching topics every so often keeps the mind from going insane. I can cope with a three hour ECON lecture but a 1.5 hour Dynamics lecture pushes it. It's why I tend to study for multiple exams on any given day - gives the material time to sit in my mind while I'm still productive. Plus, some courses are tied together (not so much for you, I suppose), and rely on the other prof teaching their material in time.