What’s the Best Course Length?

A fundamental issue in designing an appropriate curriculum for a citizenship preparation class is that of course length. You have to decide on the number of weeks that a class should run, or whether there should be any set length at all.

In my experience, there’s really only one factor that drives the decision: the typical length of time between when a student enters the program and she passes the interview. Although it might be nice to plan the curriculum based on the time needed to optimize the students’ ability to learn, we rarely have that luxury.

By tracking the students who have entered our program in the past two years, I've calculated the mean (average) and the median (most common) of the length of time between their entry and their passing the interview. I then eliminated the extreme cases and recalculated, excluding those who were in the program more than 2.5 times or less than .33 the mean. (Both of these multiples are capricious and arbitrary. If anyone wants to do this more rigorously just shout me out and I’ll send you the data). The sample was 42 students total, 25 who have passed the interview. It’s a small sample but probably large enough for our purposes.

The adjusted median is 81 days, or 11.6 weeks. The mean is 99 days, or 14.2 weeks. I think it makes sense to focus the scheduling on that range.

Anecdotally, many students first come to us after filing their application or after receiving their fingerprint appointment. That usually leaves 12 -16 weeks before their interview to prepare. But there are also those who come in after they get their interview appointment. That leaves about 6 – 8 weeks to get ready. So the scheduled curriculum must be flexible and compressible in a standard and easily administered way to accommodate latecomers.

Although we decide on a case basis whether to allow students to join a class after a couple of classes, our policy is to never turn away anyone, especially one who has a scheduled interview. There may not be enough time for them to get all of our brilliant nuances but they should have the same opportunity to succeed as the others.

As stated earlier, the median/mean range that a student is with us is 11 – 14 weeks. Let’s try setting the class curriculum for 12 weeks, and add a review class at the end for a total of 13 weeks and see how well that works.

For a late starter, a 12 week schedule can be compressed into fewer weeks as needed, with double assignments until the time is made up, up to a probable minimum of 6 weeks, which requires double work for 6 weeks. Not easy to do, but it can be done if the student is advanced and motivated. So it’s possible to accommodate a student who enters the class with as few as 6 weeks to go before the interview.

How does this fit into a yearly schedule? Were it not for holidays and vacations, a 13 week schedule could be given 4 times a year, but I think it’s more realistic to plan on a 17 week rotation, 3 times a year. Of course, if the demand is there, you can always run multiple overlapping classes.

 
A 13 week class that meets 3 hours a week yields 39 contact hours. Subtract the review class and there are 36 hours of face time with the students. Now the question is, what do we do with our 36 hours? We’ll begin to answer that next post.