Bart Janssen wrote:
>I did say that I had limited experience. But I have been in the US
>close to 3 years and been at 3 different Universities (Texas A&M, UC
>Davis, and now U of A) and I too have seen the tired stressed faces of
>the undergrads in our lab during exam time and when assignments are
>due. So I talked to them. And to my amazment (seriously, I was
>stunned) I found these students (some of whom were very good) had a
>course load of around 20 hours/week. This was including all lectures
>tutorials discussion groups and labs.
Were these hours like a professors contact hours? Our students get 1 hour
of credit for a three hour lab so, even though they get four hours credit
for a Biology class, they were in school for 6 hours to get those four
hours. If they take four lab courses as one of my students is doing with
one straight lecture class they would get 19 credit hours but, would be in
class for 27 hours.
I know students are not putting in as much time in lab as when I was an
undergrad because, many of our students take a minimum of hours (12) to get
their financial aid. I also was on the quarter system for most of my
college years and we had to attend lab for 6 hours a week per class. Some
of the labs today are only two hours a week.
It all depends on how hard the students want to work and how long they want
to take to get their degree.
Cyndy
Dr. Cynthia M. Galloway
Assoc. Professor of Biology
Dept. of Biology
Campus Box 158
Texas A&M University
Kingsville, TX 78363
(512)593-3790
