Intensive Courses

There's a new article over at Inside Higher Ed., which states that a new poll shows students prefer intensive courses—"those [courses] taught on a tighter than normal schedule, with more class time each week, but fewer weeks."

This may be true, but I wonder if the same educational value exists in shorter, more concentrated courses. It seems to me that people need time and space to process what they learn. In my case, I don't know that I was able to learn that much in my concentrated courses because it was all so quick. The one quad class that I really benefited from—a course on W.H. Auden—was helpful because I returned to the material later, revisiting poems and themes discussed in the class. I look back on my term at Oxford, which was as concentrated as it gets, and I know that I learned how to write and think more effectively, but I don't know how well I learned philosophy.

Of course, concentrated courses are a great idea if one is just trying to jump through hoops—which is why they are so often used in for-profit education.