Melinda Roy
This is the second post of our series on course compaction. The first post addressed impacts on students; in this post, we look at positive impacts of course compaction to instructors.
Course compaction reviews are often seen to prioritize institutional efficiency, by maximizing the ratios of students to instructors in classes—effectively getting as much tuition as possible with as little instructor remuneration as possible. At best, this assumption lacks nuance, and at worse it indicates cynicism and distrust in institutional leadership. But strategic course compaction benefits everyone.
While instructor FTEs and student contact hours may go up due to course compaction, strategic thinkers understand that class size, classroom amenities, and instructor workloads impact student learning experiences and success. Faculty contracts are in place not to be pushed to their limit, but to ensure job stability, consistency, equity, and healthy working conditions. There is a wealth of research and best practices on optimal instructor to student ratios, which is often reflected in existing instructor employment contracts.
The right ratio of instructor to student ensures a students classroom experience includes learning from and with their peers, as much as it ensures instructor-led learning.
A strategic approach to course compaction will recognize that target course enrolments must leave room for adequate flexibility to: 1) allow for instructors to assess and self-determine how they want to balance their workload with their desire to help students progress, (such as accept a waitlisted student over contract limits) and 2) allow students adequate flexibility in their course schedule (by having multiple section offerings and electives to choose from).
Strategic course compaction (and de-compaction) supports curriculum development, at both the program and course level by identifying not only redundancy in course materials but by identifying gaps in the curriculum and shifts in student special interest topics.
A course compaction review can identify where new advancements in a field can be integrated into existing courses, or where there is enough new content to warrant its own course. This encourages instructors to reengage and update their course materials, and tenured faculty to keep up with new development in their professional fields.
Instructors with a long history in the field who are up-to-date with current advancements offer critical perspectives and expertise that students may not receive otherwise.
When courses are compacted, these can create gaps in the course schedule or program offerings, and/or can alleviate scheduling conflicts. This increases clarity and flexibility for pathways to graduation. For instructors, these gaps can provide opportunity for them to offer advanced seminar courses at regular annual or semi-annual intervals on a topic of special interest, or provide room in their contract for professional development, or work with high-achieving students on an independent study or research project. It can also mean less courses scheduled in undesirable weekday time slots.
Course compaction can create room for instructors to design and teach advanced seminar courses on a special or particularly timely topic of interest.
Course compaction, when combined with course forecasting, also supports contract and part-time instructor hiring and regularization. Course enrolment forecasting based on different scenarios of course compaction enables Deans to not only understand long-term impacts of their decisions on student enrolment, but also on instructor demand. They can begin recruiting, hiring, and planning instructor assignments in advance of the registration cycle, providing their instructors with clear expectations for employment in the upcoming year.
Watch for our next post on the series, where we discuss what happens when course compaction goes awry.
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