The Lure of “Easy” Classes

Written with Michael Brown

Mary: There’s been a lot of discussion this week about the new book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, and The Chronicle released its own study of writing requirements, based on an analysis of syllabi from colleges and universities in Texas. One big take-away from both the book and study is that students are not doing enough reading and writing in their courses.

If students aren’t reading, and faculty are unable or unwilling to convince students of the necessity to read, where do we go from here? We do not live in country that wholeheartedly embraces reading. Studies have found that most people in the United States don’t even read a newspaper every day.

Although we assume that taking college courses translates into reading and writing, it does not necessarily follow that students plan to read and write for each of their classes. Most students I know create a class schedule based on a combination of easy and difficult classes. Easy classes have very few (if any) writing assignments and have a very light reading load. Students admit to me that they wouldn’t be able to successfully complete the work required from four difficult classes in the same semester. They need a break. They need a class, or two, that helps them to earn credits with very little effort.

Mike: There is certainly some evidence that supports your point, but I am not yet willing to jump to the conclusion (and you are certainly not doing that) that taking courses requiring less reading and writing is inimical to learning. The balance of “easy” and “difficult” classes may contribute to learning, and not all easy courses are, just by way of being easy, courses that don’t teach. Also, when an “easy” course relies primarily on discussion rather than product, it may teach what it is designed to teach better than one that promotes product over discussion.

My point here is just that the standard generalizations may not be accurate ways of understanding how students learn and how colleges and universities can help them to learn. Of course there is a strategic aspect to students’ desire to balance the demands of their courses, but that does not mean that the effect is altogether negative.

Mary: Mike, I don’t disagree with you. I think that students may still be learning in their easy classes and that there is a range of easy classes. However, if a student views a class as easy, do we think they plan to do a lot of learning in that class? I know that students often learn even when they don’t plan to, but are we really helping them to learn by offering classes that they have written off as blow-off classes?

And how do faculty feel about teaching these classes that are used to fill a student’s schedule? What happens when a professor decides to take an easy class seriously and teach it as a difficult class? I was once given that task, and the students revolted. When we went over the syllabus on the first day of class, several students told me that my class was supposed to be their easy class and that they would have to drop it and find another. I told the students that my chair had asked me to make this class more academically rigorous.

They just looked at me in disbelief, and several students did drop it.