NC State students received an impromptu vacation this week thanks to Hurricane Florence, as the university canceled classes beginning at noon on Sept. 12 and ending Sept. 18, when classes will resume. This was certainly a reasonable precaution given Florence’s original projected path and the risk it posed to students’ safety. Unfortunately, the loss of as many as three entire class periods for some Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes has left many professors scrambling to recover the time.
It’s still early in the semester, which should give all impacted classes time to reconfigure their schedules in order to minimize the need for cramming, but some professors have yet to take steps, such as rescheduling tests or material, which would take full advantage of all the remaining weeks in the term.
Two of my classes were hit with this 1-week delay, and while the class calendars for both have received updates for the upcoming week, the tests are still scheduled for the same day and the same topics as before the hurricane struck. I’ve also heard friends grumbling about tests which are still scheduled for this week despite the missed class time.
As wonderful as it would be if we college students were self-sufficient enough to read through the textbook or get ahead on work over this long weekend, the reality is that time spent out of class cannot fully make up for the missed hours of engagement with the professor. For students with tests fast approaching, this means the stress of trying to cram a week’s worth of material into a day or two of office hours, in addition to regular studying.
There are two plausible solutions to this. The easiest would seem to be to postpone the tests until the needed material is covered, but due to fixed dates like the fall semester drop/revision deadline on Oct. 19, there’s considerable pressure to make sure there are at least one or two exams graded by that point.
Thus professors should take the other option, of spreading missed topics out beyond the first test. The drawback of this is that the topics covered on each test may not exactly match with each other, but this is vastly preferable to moving the test back by a day and trying to stuff twice as much material into the same period of time.
A study from the Journal for Marketing Education finds cramming is less effective as a study strategy than regularly reviewing course material, and it notes “overwhelming” agreement on this point from background literature. Professors often seek to implement policies that discourage students from cramming for this very reason.
As such, it’s odd — although not unsurprising given human nature — that professors tend to use the cramming model when it comes to catching up on missed class time from hurricanes or snow.
The university could make this process easier by adjusting the academic calendar to better accommodate the shifting of tests, although this is unlikely given how far in advance these dates are scheduled and how much infrastructure is built based off the current dates. Barring any such action, professors must make the best of a bad situation by taking full advantage of the 2-and-a-half months remaining in the term.
Students aren’t off the hook entirely either. It’s more important than ever that they keep up with coursework, as the increased density may otherwise come as a surprise. It’s also imperative that students actually attend their classes as much as possible, since each one will be more valuable from this point forward.
NC State is a resilient institution, and as we pick up the physical debris from Hurricane Florence, we must ensure we’re also taking care of the chronological debris. By intelligently restructuring our course calendars and dedicating ourselves to covering all necessary content, our university will surely weather this storm with flying colors.
