Teaching Accelerated Courses

Abstract

Time-shortened accelerated courses are common in many academic programs. In such courses the student, instructor contact hours, which is typically 45 hours, is accomplished in four or six weeks. Workiig adult students are often drawn to these intense courses since they can continue with their regular daytime jobs and attend classes in the evenings and weekends. Teaching these courses in an accelerated format is a challenge, yet a bigger challenge is to ensure students achieve the learning outcomes in such courses. Past methods and practices do not fully address this mode of teaching and learning. The typical educational paradigms such as behaviorism and constructivism were used to serve the industrial growth and expansion by supplying workforce with conformity and standards. With the recent advances in technolgy and the available learning tools, adequacy of these current paradigms are questioned. Industry and the market are demanding creative problem solvers, where diversity of talents is more useful than conformity of skills. Many institutions now offer short accelerated courses but there seems to be a lack of comprehensice studies on the impact of these short courses on student learning. Best teacing practices in accelerated format, particularly in science and engineering, and ways to enhance student learning haven't been fully investigated. There are several emerging alternatives for learning that need to be evaluated in order to investigate the challenges and opportunities with accerated programs. This paper examines past practices and evaluates new trends characterizing some of the emerging paradigms in education that can be employed in teaching accerated courses. Based on some preliminary results and analysis, this paper proposes a teaching approach for accelerated courses that has produced promising results in more technically oriented classes that may be applicable to other disciplines as well.