Taking undergraduate courses out of sequence

    Imagine that college undergraduates took their courses in reverse order: senior level courses first, junior level next, freshman level last. Are there fields of study for which this would hardly matter, with the students scoring as well as expected on exams, and employers unable to detect anything amiss?

    At one extreme there is learning in series, where each subject cannot be well learned unless prior subjects have been well learned. At the other extreme there is learning that can be done in parallel, where each subject can be well learned at any time in college, no matter how well the other subjects have been learned.

    Would it be possible to impose learning in series on all fields? If possible, would it be good to do? Could every journalism course, say, be designed to depend on other courses in the curriculum? If so, would this be beneficial to the education of journalists? Or would it be harmful?

    For each field of study, what mix of learning in series, and learning in parallel, is optimum? Or is this a silly question?

    If there are fields for which learning in parallel is common, does this risk leading to courses that are a grab bag of knowledge and skills, of questionable necessity to mastering the fields?

    Which fields of study need capstone courses? Which don’t? Or do all need them? Or do all don’t?

Comments

[Aaron Kelson]

It seems to me that for any professional education to succeed a student must be exposed to both parallel and series learning. This exposure should be more or less constant throughout the educational program. Parallel learning often helps students understand the "whys" as they grapple with the "hows." Parallel learning is often educators only hope for jolting students out of what seems to be a widespread, culturally-induced lethargy toward learning anything challenging.

On the other hand, without a strong series education parallel learning may allow students to fall right back into lethargy. They may begin to think that everything is relative, that one person's opinion is just as valid as any other person's opinion no matter what differences in education and experience may exist. They fail to understand the struggle required to gain even a single grain of reliable knowledge.

"Teaching is a violent profession" is a statement I accept. I don't think series or parallel learning fully capture the essence of this statement. Each student's educational experience can be compared to his or her writing a personal guidebook for life. Series learning helps students add pages sequentially to the book. Parallel learning helps students insert pages among material already accumulated. But a skillful teacher (or team of teachers) can help another kind of learning take place, learning that is metamorphic. When metamorphic (big change) learning takes place even though new material may be added to the guidebook the student goes through the pain of ripping pages and even whole chapters out of the book. The student usually ends up with a smaller guidebook compared to what he would have designed, but the book is infinitely more valuable in the end. It is a book that reveals the student's understanding of the price of truth.

Henry David Thoreau said that we ought to build our castles in the air, but then we should put the foundations under them. If all learning is serial, students are incapable of imagining what is possible. If all learning is parallel, they will never understand how to build the foundation. But in the process of acquiring knowledge if no learning is metamorphic they won't have the inspiration to dream or the courage to build toward any goal other than a higher paying job. And that castle is only a few feet off the ground.

Thank you Charles for the chance to express some ideas.

[Bill Davis]

Methinks we lean heavily toward being order disordered. Our predilection toward tidying things up leads us often down a primrose path leading us askew from truth. Arranging ALL learning into either sequential or parallel structures exclusively seems silly at first glance and well beyond. "Coming to know" happens in fits and spurts at least as often as it happens in carefully prescribed layers. Be wary of constructing paradigms which are likely to be shifted dramatically, if not shattered. Build it, and they may come, but when they arrive, they may well redesign it.