During Summer Semester I discovered something: telecourses. They are just like online courses, except they are supported by funding, last only the length of the semester and the lectures are on TV.
This option provides such a flexible way of doing things.
Not only do you get to decide when you want to watch the lectures, but, unlike normal classes, you can watch them as many times as you want. Plus, forget about losing points for being absent — you can sleep in!
The only problem is that there are so few to choose from, thus making it difficult to apply them to a specific degree.
When I was registering for Summer Semester, I soon saw that the classes were twice as long in order to fit the same number of hours into a shorter number of months. This means classes that don’t overlap are much harder to find.
Scheduling classes was next to impossible when I finally got down to it. I needed at least 12 credit hours and these classes were at least two hours each, twice a week. But the classes were all on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the same times.
Of course, the option of online classes had always appealed to me, but, like a lot of students, I have to rely on government funding to get me through the year. For some reason, the grants don’t work with online classes.
That’s where telecourses came in.
Some of the schoolwork is posted online for some telecourse classes, but for the most part telecourses consist of watching lectures on KUED, turning in assignments and going to exams. If I had TiVo, it would be even better than I thought!
With these telecourses, students with less time to go to class can still manage to be in line with everyone else and get a good grade in the course.
This means students can have more time to be with family, friends or at work instead of in a lecture.
Students can record and rewind the lectures or check out copies in the library. These classes are what every busy student dreams about.
The professors for the telecourses are very flexible, too. If you live far away and can’t make it to an exam, they will usually work with you to make sure you can take it another day. Plus, the locations where you can take the exams cover several campuses. For example, I take my psychology exams in Murray because it’s closer to home and parking is free.
Something else I’ve noticed over the course of the semester is that you learn more from telecourses, perhaps because you watch the lectures and read the text when you are ready to do it, instead of daydreaming through the material in class. Of course, it’s also possible with telecourses to procrastinate all of the work, so it requires motivation.
Sadly, there are few telecourses offered at the U — only nine classes for Summer Semester and 11 for Fall Semester.
For such a small selection, it probably isn’t possible for students to always find classes they can use for their degrees — but I got lucky.
Hopefully the U will soon expand its telecourse program and you will be lucky, too.