“They’re completely redoing the schedule and trying something extremely different,” said Lewellyan. “Both the first and second year students are on campus in Big Rapids. So first year students in the fall semester will have two different labs, and then every other semester, they’ll have one lab, but they’re taking all of the labs and putting them on only Tuesdays and Thursdays. Usually, lab sections are each day of the week except Fridays, so it’s really different that they’re doing that.”
“Then they’ve blocked off time Wednesdays and Friday mornings for exams, so we’ll never take an exam during class,” said Lewellyan, who is all for the new schedule changes.
On top of those major changes, Lewellyan also said, “A couple of teachers are flipping the classrooms, so we’re watching lectures online outside of class, and doing different activities in class and then they’re putting most of our classes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Usually they separate us, so first years have class in the afternoon and second year students have class in the morning, but they’re just throwing everything together, so they’re going to utilize another classroom a lot more.”
“A lot of times, our last class in the afternoon will be an exam, so nobody shows up to the classes beforehand, and it’s been a big problem with people skipping class because of exams. So the schedule change is supposed to help eliminate that, and make us not as stressed,” she said. “We always have exams falling on the same day, or back to back, and it’s going to eliminate a lot of the stress from that.”
“Our fall semester last year, the last two weeks of school, finals week, and the very last week of classes, we had eight exams within a span of ten days, and it was overwhelming, it was too much,” she said. “This spring semester, between those last two weeks, we’ll have six exams, but some of the finals will be the week before instead of having five exams during finals week, and three exams the week before, so it’s going to be a lot better,” said Lewellyan.
Overall, Lewellyan is looking forward to the benefits of her new schedule. “I’m happy about it, I think it will be really beneficial, because except for that first year fall semester, we’ll only have lab once a week, so if you don’t have lab on Thursday, you’ll have only one class that will be an hour long, and you pretty much have all day to study and prepare for your exams.”