I’m gradually finding out enough about the way things are organized here at the University of Sussex to make some comparisons between teaching in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences here and in the School of Physics and Astronomy at my former employer, Cardiff University.
One difference I’ve noticed is probably something you find rather trivial, but I think it’s quite important. In the usual scheme of undergraduate teaching, which applies across most of the United Kingdom, students gain “credit” for taking and passing modules. A normal year would correspond to 120 credits, so that a three-year BSc degree involves a total of 360 credits and a four-year MPhys (or equivalent) is 480. In universities that run a two-semester teaching year the load per semester is thus 60 credits.
The question then is what is the best way to divide up that 60 credits into smaller pieces? Until recently at Cardiff the basic unit of teaching was a 10-credit module, which meant that students were typically doing six different things alongside each other. An ordinary ten-credit module would involve two lectures per week. Not all of these are lecture courses, however; there’s usually laboratory or computational work as one of the 10 credit chunks. During a recent course review it was decided to increase the size of some of the modules to 20 credits. That’s how it came to pass that I taught a new module of that size last semester (for the first and last time).
The motivation for increasing the size of modules was twofold. One is that having lots of small modules makes the overall study programme disjointed and “bitty”, with students having lots of things on the go at the same time and little opportunity to study any topics in real depth. The other is that having four hours per week instead of two allows the lecturer to use the time more flexibly, in particular with sessions intended to develop problem-solving skills.
Although the “core” modules at Cardiff increased to 20 credits, the others remained at 10. There was a lot of discussion about increasing all modules, but in the end the new programme was left as a mixture.
Interestingly, here at Sussex the normal module size is 15 credits (and “modules” are also called “courses”), meaning that students actually only do four things at the same time in a typical semester. In fact this was what I originally suggested when we started the teaching review at Cardiff, but it was thrown out immediately on the grounds that the University had decreed that modules must be multiples of 10 credits only. I’m not sure whether there was an educational reason for this, or just that it made the arithmetic simpler.
Anyway, I like 15 credits as a basic unit but am not sure how many other Schools and Departments run that system. I’d be interested to learn about module sizes favoured elsewhere through the comments box, and here’s a poll so you can vote:
Another difference is that although Sussex has two teaching semesters, the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) does not have mid-year examinations, so First Semester courses are examined in the Summer along with the Second Semester ones. In Cardiff, modules are examined at the end of the semester in which they are taught. There are pros and cons with this. I think students who are used to mid-year examinations like the fact that the examinations are not all concentrated in one period during the summer and also that they get some feedback on their progress during the year. On the other hand, students may see an end-of-semester examination as an encouragement to close the lid on a particular module and forget about it as soon as it is over, making it harder to understand how different aspects of physics interconnect.
Students at Sussex seem keen not to have mid-year examinations, while those at Cardiff seem equally keen to retain them. I don’t know what that means, so here’s another poll to see if there’s any clear opinion one way or another among my readers…
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