Having flexible course registration along with cohorts

In a previous post I discussed the complex relationship between the decision of whether or not to have cohorts and the ability of students to have a flexible course registration process. Here at Ross we need a flexible course registration process — or, at least, we need one at least as flexible as the one we have now. A more flexible process would probably also be welcome as long as it could be implemented in a reasonable way by a reasonable number of people working a reasonable number of hours.

It would be easy to implement a very flexible system if we just got rid of cohorts — the practice of putting students into groups that persist across courses. Simply let students register for whatever courses they want that are still available when their registration time comes up. Of course, this doesn’t allow Ross to continue to use cohorts.

I have talked with about 30 seniors over the last two weeks in some depth about this issue. I can’t give you any conclusive proof that what they told me is perfectly representative of the rest of the class, but I can tell you that these students really, really are happy that Ross had cohorts (or “sections”, as they call them):

• Many students bond with their section-mates so much so that they become their best friends.
• Section-mates are a student’s support group as she goes through a difficult set of core courses.
• A student’s section is her home in which she can gain a sense of community in a large university.
• A student’s experiences with her section-mates are some of the dominant thoughts as she reflects back on her time at Ross and UM.

Any decision to abolish the use of sections would alter the environment of the school and is outside my current goal: to improve the flexibility of the registration process (within the confines of our cohort-based system).

I have received several recommendations from students and staff related to this situation and we’re beginning to narrow in on a proposal. I have already run this exact scenario by about 20 seniors and they liked it. Note that the following isn’t necessarily implementable within the university’s registration process, but it’s worth thinking about. I am writing all of this so that I might hear from students and staff what they think about it.

Here’s the process that I’m thinking about:

1. The University publishes its schedule, including Ross courses.
2. Students know which section to which she is assigned for the current year.
3. Students look at the Ross courses and bid for electives.
4. Students are notified which electives they successfully bid for. Students have these classes loaded into their schedules.
5. Each student looks at the Ross electives that she got into and the UM electives that she wants to get it. The student determines if these electives conflict with one of the core courses to which he or she is assigned.
6. If the student doesn’t find such a conflict (which would be the normal state of affairs), then the student doesn’t need to do anything and registration proceeds as normal.
7. However, if the student does find a conflict, then she would petition to opt out of the section assignment process for a specific course. Petitions would be more likely to be approved if the student had previously (that is, several weeks or months ago) set up a long-term course of study that requires a certain LS&A or Ross elective to be taken (for example, in order to complete a dual major or minor); they would be less likely to be approved if the student simply wants to get out of an 8:30 section of a course. Of course, the student would end up not being with her section, but this would be a decision that the student thinks is best for her overall.
8. Before any UM students begin to register, all of the students who did not opt out of section assignments would be pre-loaded into the appropriate sections for the core courses. The students who did opt out of these assignments would not be pre-loaded into courses.
9. During registration, students would register for courses as usual; however, students who opted-out of their core sections would also have to register for whatever section of the core that is available. Students would not be guaranteed a spot in a “better” section or even a different section during open registration. He or she would simply be taking a chance that a better section might be open when his or her registration slot comes up.
10. After registration is over, students who for some reason still want to change sections would go to the CTools course swap Web site that we have set up. At this site, the student would attempt to swap her spot in one section with a student in another section of the same course.

I’m not sure how to handle students who are not able to get into a core course section that does not overlap with the electives that she has gotten into. The real problem that I see with this is whether or not there is time to do all that this process requires. I look forward to hearing 1) from students about whether or not this process seems reasonable and which parts might be more important than others, and 2) from staff about whether or not this process can, or even should be, implemented.

Again, I’m sure that I will be writing more about this at a later time.

Cohorts or not?

At the Ross BBA Program we currently cohort our students; that is, we assign students to specific sections across several different classes. Cohorts provide the benefit of giving the student a set of students with which they can bond more strongly than they could without the cohort because of repeated interaction with those students. As such cohorts provide a more socially safe environment for students.

Not all is positive related to cohorts. Students don’t get to know as many students as they might otherwise; in a program as small as the Ross BBA Program, that probably should be addressed. Further, academically cohorts aren’t always positive; students can get too comfortable with each other; students can get slotted into defined roles from which they find it difficult to extricate themselves; and faculty can have a hard time breaking into the culture that the students have defined and created (from previous classroom experiences with each other).

I have been thinking a lot recently about cohorts and related issues:

• Should students be grouped into cohorts for their core classes?
• How long should those cohorts exist — that is, should they have different cohorts each year?
• How rigid should Ross be in enforcing the assignment of cohorts — what type of reason should a student have that would enable him or her to opt out of the cohort assignment?
• If students are not assigned to cohorts, how can we ensure that attractive sections (e.g.., those not taught at 8:30am) are at least theoretically available to all students? And, even if we can ensure this, should we ensure this?

Generally, over the last couple of years I have moved Ross to a more flexible policy related to requests to get out of specific cohort assignments. The reasons for opting out that I have looked favorably upon come from students who have an academic plan in place for their remaining time at Michigan (and have had that plan for a while), and a specific course that is needed to fulfill that plan conflicts with a core course assignment. We want to be as supportive as possible of students who want to challenge themselves academically.

Now that we have a three year program with two fairly significant years of core courses (instead of just one as we had before), we have started out assigning students to cohorts one year at a time. That is, a student’s cohort in the sophomore year will be composed of different students than in the junior year. We believe that this will provide students with a “home” in which the student will be comfortable but will also allow him or her to meet more students during the course of his or her time at Ross.

This issue has come up more frequently for two reasons. First, we have more students getting dual majors and minors so their schedules have to be planned better, are more specified, and have less leeway. Second, the classrooms that we use for BBA core courses have less extra space than we used to have in the old building and less space than we will have in the new building. This means that we can’t simply move a student from one section into another because it is entirely possible that there would not be a chair for the student to sit in.

I have not decided one way or the other what to do. I am trying to come up with the best solution for the most students. If you have any thoughts on this from whatever perspective, please let those thoughts be known. I’m sure that I will have more thoughts on this later and, eventually, I will provide more information about what we end up doing.