Exploring Barnard's New "Intensive" Courses

This fall, I had the opportunity to try out one of Barnard’s latest academic experiments: short, 6-week intensive courses to be offered alongside the typical semester-long courses. In President Beilock’s announcement to the Barnard community this past August, she reported that Barnard had transitioned around 1/3rd of its courses to this intensive format in order to assess how this design might enhance remote learning. 3 out of 5 of my classes ended up switching to this intensive format, with two in Fall A and one in Fall B, alongside two regular full-semester courses. Since intensive courses had to cover the same content in half the time, two different formats were devised to double the class time: a course could either double the length of each class meeting, or double the number of times a class meets each week. Luckily, I had the opportunity to try out both methods simultaneously!

The first method, doubling the length of the class session for each meeting but continuing to meet on the typical twice a week schedule, was used for my Major French Texts course. This class met for 2.5 hours on Mondays and Wednesdays. Although this format did, undoubtedly, lead to a very long class session (even with a ten minute break halfway through), we really got the chance to dig into each text. The longer session served our purposes well for this course, as it meant that we could tackle an entire text in one class period, rather than segmenting our discussion across the week. Additionally, the transition from thinking and speaking in English to thinking and speaking in French is a process that takes time with each new class session. With a typical French class, by the time we make this mental transition, the session is halfway over. However, this intensive format meant that we could acclimate ourselves to French at the beginning of each class, and still have hours ahead of us to discuss the texts with enthusiasm and confidence.

The other method is to meet twice as often but to keep the class session the usual length of time. My Introduction to Philosophy class met 4 days a week at 8:40am. This intensive method was similarly appropriate for its content. I found that one of the most important aspects of the course was to allow myself the time to fully digest the philosophical concepts presented. If we had structured this course in the same way as my French course, I would sit through 2.5 hours of class without the chance to step back and evaluate what each philosophical concept meant. Luckily, this segmented format allowed us to read a text, discuss it on Monday, evaluate what we had discussed, and return to the text on Tuesday with a fresh set of eyes. Our conversations were fluid from one day to the next, and we would often finish class with a simple “Let’s pause there and we’ll come back to it tomorrow.” Although we rocketed through the works of Plato and Nietzsche over the six weeks, the time in between classes to think and formulate questions meant that our discussions were nuanced and complex with each meeting.

Overall, Barnard’s new intensive courses have had a strong impact on how I view the academic structure of college courses. Regular, in-class, full-semester courses will still reign supreme for me as the most engaging educational method, but unusual times call for unusual measures, and I found that these intensive courses breathed life into the typical online class experience. I hope that Barnard will choose to keep this format around for additional courses in future semesters, as I believe that the intensive method pairs perfectly with our innovative approach to learning.