Fifth week reflections

Today marks the start of the fifth week of class here at ASU. I think that this is a good time to talk a bit about classes.

I went to a small high school about a mile north of the Downtown Phoenix campus. To provide some numbers, my graduating class had thirty-five students. Of the 35, half of us traveled from class to class together and the other half did likewise. Essentially, I have been in small class settings before so I am relatively used to them.

Of the classes that meet in a location at a specific time (i.e. not online or independent study courses), two have 35-40 students (each) in them. In these two classes, I think that I am the only student from the College of Public Programs. The rest are from the other colleges on the Downtown Phoenix campus. The other two meet on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. Those are significantly smaller, with five and eight people in those classes, respectively.

Something about these small classes and the format thereof is that everyone has to be on the ball. These are discussion-driven courses (here, they're called seminars) so you have to do the assigned readings. But you know what? I'd prefer these small seminars over a large lecture any day. The largest class in which I've been had 196 students. True, it's medium-sized by ASU's standards but it was extremely large by my standards.

Cheers-
Edward Jensen