Monday, April 23, 2007

Fieldtrip/class overlap...

I'm becoming a bit irritated with another faculty member.

That faculty member has scheduled fieldtrips -- four of them -- that cause students to miss one of my classes on Wednesdays....

The justification for this is that the facilities they are going to aren't open for fieldtrips at the time of the class.

I think it is unreasonable to require students to miss four class sessions -- the equivalent of two weeks of class.

He says there is an alternative assignment, which is watching a video of the fieldtrip --- i.e. not really an alternative.

I'm SURE he would pitch a fit if I had required fieldtrips that pulled those same students out of his class.

The way I see it, you have a set time with your students. He has both class time and lab time -- so he has even more than most of us. If you can't teach the course materials during that time, you shouldn't have scheduled the classes at those times.

Expecting students to miss the equivalent of 2 weeks out of a 16 week semester is unreasonable and unfair, right?

3 comments:

Miranda said...

Yes. It is unfair to expect students to miss that much class time.

Arbitrista said...

Yes.

Weezy said...

I had the same problem a year ago. Even worse...prof's kid in her father's class. It was an environmental studies class. Every friday they would take the day off to go look at garbage or wind turbines or whatever.

After two absences, I put a stop to it. Yes, field trips are informative-- no, the world does not revolve around your section.

In my mind it is selfish and inconsiderate (especially of the students.)