What makes the community college route appealing for students is the flexibility it provides in terms of one’s schedule. However, the scheduling inconsistency from class to class makes a student’s life even less flexible.
When students go to sign up for their classes at American River College, they are presented with several options for class formats. These include fully in-person, fully online, hybrid or asynchronous. Each format has its own unique benefits, with in-person classes catering to those who thrive using their time on campus all the way to asynchronous which is supposed to provide a flexible schedule for home-bodies or people who have a busy schedule.
The issue is that students aren’t always getting the perks of the class format they sign up for. ARC needs to formulate strict guidelines as to what the course load and schedule looks like based on each type of class format.
For example, while asynchronous classes should give students the flexibility to take their quizzes and tests at the easiest point during a stretch that lasts around a week, some asynchronous classes schedule tests or class work to be completed during very specific and limited times.
If a student takes an asynchronous class, they shouldn’t have to clear their Tuesday night because that is the singular, specific time that their professor assigned a test for.
Some in-person classes allow students to get the good majority of their work done in class, while other in-person classes still have students doing hours of work at home each night.
If a student takes an in-person class, they should not be spending as much time working on homework as students with an asynchronous class, especially considering the fact that they are taking an in-person class to have time to work a job in the evening.
Let’s say that two students are taking the same number of credits in a semester. Both students should need to dedicate roughly the same amount of time to their classwork, regardless of what kind of class formats they are taking.
The time a student has to put into a class has become dependent on how the professor runs their class, rather than what kind of format the class is.
It’s not a matter of the amount of time that a student has to put into a class. It’s about giving students the flexibility to decide what hours of their day go towards their class.
If ARC were to set guidelines for how a class is run, students would finally be able to appropriately pick their classes in a way that fits their schedule.
