Hi there. In this education post, I cover the topic of student schedules and luck. This post topic came to me as in my Mathnasium work we are asking our students when they have math. If a high school student has math in the first semester instead of the second semester we can select certain math topics that matches with what the student is working on. In addition, we can offer some homework assistance along with the main Mathnasium material (at the location I work for).
Also when it comes to the student experience at elementary school, middle school, high school, college or university, it is different for everyone because of the luck of the draw with teachers, classmates and schedules. I had a past post about the luck of the draw in education. With this post, I focus more on the luck factor in student schedules.
There Are Some Things You Can't Control
One life lesson that students gradually accept over the years as they grow is that there are some things that are beyond their control. They do not choose their teachers nor they do not choose their classmates. For students in a semestered system they do not really choose their schedules and some timeslots for classes. Randomness is a part of the student experience and is a part of life. Students have to able to deal with what they are given to and adapt accordingly.
Student Schedules
Different schools adopt different school schedules. Some schools run under a semestered system where a set of classes are grouped into the first semester and another set of classes are grouped into a second semester for the school year. For the Toronto area and in my province of Ontario one semester contains 4 courses maximum. Students in a semestered system would choose which courses they would like to take in the school year. The student typically does not choose which semester for a course. A student schedule would be created based on the student choices, course offerings, teacher availability and so on.
There are schools who adopt a non-semestered system. A non-semestered system is common in my area for grades 1 to 8 where students learn all the available subjects for the entire school year. Students in my area would get a full school year of math, science, English/Grammar, social studies, French and so on.
Luck Of The Draw
Not all school schedules are the same and the student experience can vary depending on the difficulty of courses in a school schedule. For high school students in grade 11 and 12 in my area, it is well known that having math and three science courses in the form of Chemistry, Biology and Physics is difficult to deal with in a single semester. A lighter semester would feature one of science/math with other less technical courses. The difficulty of courses in a semester is important for senior high school students who need good grades to get into a top ranked college/university. Having too many difficult courses in a semester could be too much to handle which could lead to burnout and reduced academic performance.
In college and university, there are cases where you can have back to back lectures that last to 3 to 5 hours based on selected courses. That is a lot of sitting down and taking notes. Students may face tough decisions when it comes to course selection. There could be a course that sounds interesting but it is held at an inconvienient time slot as it would conflict with another class or it would add more back to back class time.
Notes On Exam Schedules
There is also a luck factor when it comes to final exam schedules for high school, college and/or university. Consider a university student who has five courses in a semester. There are final exams with one final exam for each of the five courses. Favourable final exam schedules would have exams that are fairly spread out over a two/three final examination period. A somewhat bad exam schedule would be having the exams close together at the end of the exam period. An awful and unfortunate exam schedule would be where the exams are close together and are in the beginning in the exam period. This awful case leads to very little study time which heavily punishes cramming.
It is kind of scary to think that exam schedules can have a big impact on final exam scores and final grades. There are a few courses out there do put a heavy weight as high as 70% of the final grade for the final exam (from what I heard coming out of the University of Waterloo). Some courses do not have a final exam as it may have a presentation or a final project instead. Some courses could have a final exam with a weight of 30% of the final grade.
