Towards a smarter academic year
More downtime for all
Door Maja-Magdalena Klein
By Maja-Magdalena Klein
Maja-Magdalena Klein
When you study at the Sorbonne in France, your classes end the second week of May and won’t start again until the third week of September.
At St. Andrews in Scotland, the last classes are even earlier, in the third week of April, while the new academic year still opens in the third week of September.
Compared to universities abroad, the academic year in the Netherlands is almost six weeks longer. Students have four more exam weeks every year and two more resit periods, according to a 2022 report by the Dutch Young Academy. No wonder students and academic staff in the Netherlands say they’re stressed and tired.
Erik Meijles, director of education at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences, has seen the result of students trying to balance the course load with personal activities and work firsthand. ‘The staff is affected, too. There is always friction between teaching and research for them, and time pressures on both.’
Balance
That’s why the University of Groningen jumped at the chance to take part in a national pilot to create a ‘smarter academic year’. In the next few years, five faculties will be experimenting with ways to give everyone some room to breathe.
‘From physiology, we know that exercise is much more straining to an organism if done all at once, as opposed to being spread out’, says UG education specialist Rob van Ouwerkerk. ‘So at the university, the workload and rest periods should also be balanced.’
How the faculties manage that is up to them. But it’s not as simple as reducing the number of lecture weeks, explains Van Ouwerkerk. ‘You also have to redesign the whole course. If you don’t change the content, you risk simply increasing the workload for the students.’
Challenges
The changes make for some administrative challenges, too. The course load has to respect the European Credit framework agreements, in which one credit in the Netherlands equals twenty-eight hours of work. ‘This is why our academic year is as long as it is in the first place. The Dutch are just very strict with their numbers’, Van Ouwerkerk says. ‘But taking into consideration how much shorter other European universities’ schedules are, there is actually a little bit of bandwidth that we can work with.’
Another problem is the allocation of classrooms, laboratories, and most importantly, examination halls. A rescheduling of courses shouldn’t set off a chain reaction of scheduling problems within the faculty or university.
Despite all that, vice dean Bart Streumer of the Faculty of Philosophy says changes are ‘desperately needed’. His teaching experience in England has led him to conclude that the longer Dutch academic year does not lead to better results. ‘Just look around at how things are going elsewhere in the world.’
So which measures are the five faculties implementing? UKrant made an overview.
Science and Engineering Improving ‘studiability’
At the Faculty of Science and Engineering, the pilot is all about ‘studiability’. The academic year, they believe at FSE, can be shortened by two weeks and resits can be scheduled differently. Starting in 2024, two bachelor programmes will be experimenting with the changes in their propaedeutic year.
‘Especially first-year students find it difficult to have no breaks within blocks’, says education policy officer Deborah Bozzato. By moving the resits to the middle of the following block, the schedule is supposed to leave more time to study for the exams and resits separately. Moreover, the faculty wants to make breaks between exams and the start of the new block the norm.
Bozzato believes the faculty is on the right track, because data show that students often don’t even take the first exam possibility, but go straight to the resit, implying a serious mismatch of scheduling and workload for the students. ‘If you don’t have time to prepare, it’s quite logical you’re going for that option.’
And when students do take the exam, they often have to take the resit anyway, leading to more grading work for staff and the work stress that comes with it.
It will be hard to get the schedule right, though. In part due to the sheer size of the faculty, some students are already unable to choose the courses they want for their minors. ‘But’, Bozzato says, ‘the pilot is trying to find solutions by allowing for more flexibility.’ The ultimate aim is to offer students better access to courses and minors, even those from other faculties.
Philosophy Quarterly rest weeks
The Faculty of Philosophy has reduced each block by one week, and introduced a mandatory week of rest in between. ‘It’s really very simple’, says vice dean Bart Streumer.
The changes have been implemented faculty wide as of this academic year, the only exception being the faculty’s minor subjects, which are not affected by the changes.
According to Streumer, the first reactions have been ‘largely positive’. ‘Although it still happens that someone does not completely adhere to the new regulations for the rest weeks.’
Arts Enabling true holidays
The Faculty of Arts has decided on shortening the first semester by one week, so students can have a real Christmas break instead of studying all through December for the exams in early January. Students will now have two weeks of exams instead of three. By reducing the number of assessments between other blocks too, Arts hopes to create more breathing space for both staff and students.
The board also really wanted to change the whole curriculum, transitioning from one-block 5 ECTS courses to more semester-long 10 ECTS courses. ‘It was supposed to allow for more educational quality and depth as well as fewer examinations’, says director Rixt Zeelenberg of the faculty’s education institute.
However, after backlash from within the faculty and faculty council, the plans had to be reconsidered. ‘In a large and very broad faculty like Arts, that takes substantial time’, Zeelenberg says. ‘So it is not certain we will make progress shortly.’
Luckily, the first part of the plan has already been confirmed. ‘I really hope this will provide a true Christmas break for staff and students’, says Zeelenberg.
Economics and Business Shorter blocks and fewer exams
The Faculty of Economics and Business has decided to use one programme to test its plans for a shorter academic year. The econometrics and operation research bachelor has redesigned its first year to allow for shorter blocks, with a study week before the exam week and only two resit moments a year.
The semester ends before Christmas. ‘Time has been created to play an interesting game in the week before the Christmas break’, says FEB spokesperson Mirjam Spaans.
The faculty is currently evaluating the experiences of the first semester. ‘Students in general are positive about the new schedule’, says Spaans. ‘They appreciate the long Christmas break, and they have plenty of time to rest. They see that they also have time to catch up on courses they didn’t pass.’
Spatial Sciences Chance for career development
Spatial Sciences is implementing changes faculty wide. This includes longer breaks between blocks and a work-free holiday between semesters. This will go hand in hand with shortening the lecture weeks by a week, and the academic year by two weeks.
While the preparations for these measures are still underway, the faculty has already adopted ‘low intensity weeks’, during which there are no scheduled classes. During this time, educators have the freedom to plan other activities – which are not place or time bound – in a way that fits their course best, and students have time to commit to things like writing or reading. ‘They still need to be formally evaluated, but the first impression is that they work well’, says the faculty’s director of education Erik Meijles.
To not add to the existing workload of students and staff, the faculty also consciously aims to keep the administrative hassle low, through using pre-existing evaluation systems and monitoring change where possible ‘in a low-bureaucratic way’.
The changes should give staff more time to switch from periods of grading to preparation. Students are encouraged to work on extracurricular activities, such as career development. ‘It also means that we aim to make the Christmas holiday a real holiday by abolishing grading during the holidays for staff and deadlines or exams for students directly after.’ The same applies to the summer holiday.