This year’s winter session was considered a success, so BGSU will keep a J-Term session for the following years. Paul Cesarini, assistant vice provost for Online and Summer Academic Programs, said winter session was for “catch-up or get ahead classes,” and they will continue to offer those classes in the future.
More students attended Winter Session classes than expected, totaling at 1,162 enrolled students in 62 classes, which include online, face-to-face and study abroad/study afar. Winter session held predominantly undergraduate classes, with around 80 of the total students being in the graduate college. Some classes were cancelled due to low enrollment rates, but Cesarini said they thought they would get about 600 to 700 students, so they are happy with the turnout.
Most classes were online because those are the classes that students enrolled in. “When you look at all the classes that were proposed, the vast majority of them were face-to-face, and that’s because for whatever reasons student prefer to do other things,” Cesarini said. “We’re just going to where the students are.”
As for the future, Betsy Winters, program coordinator for BSBA eCampus, is putting out a survey on Tuesday. “We have a survey going out… so it’s going to go out next Tuesday. So it’s going to go out to all students, not just students that took winter session, just to get feedback from them as to why they didn’t, what they would like to see, we’re always looking for improvement, so it’s just getting that type of feedback. It’s going to faculty as well, so we’re only sending it to faculty that taught a winter session course, but we’re also sending it to the background people, so the chairs, directors, the secretaries, that had to get everything together for winter session. To see what could have gone better, what we could have done on our end, or anything like that.”
Along with the survey, a Winter and Summer session wishlist is available online for students to give feedback and express what classes they want to take. “We want as much input and feedback as possible from students,” Cesarini said.
However, they do have an idea on what to expect for upcoming winter sessions. “The categories with be the same. Still be catch-up and get ahead, BGP, student abroad,” Cesarini said. “We’re still going to focus quite a bit of attention on study abroad, study afar, experiential… I’m assuming we’ll offer more online and we’ll see what happens with face-to-face.”
How winter sessions will look in the future will have a lot to do with what students want, but BGSU is more prepared to deliver.
“The more or less 40 people involved with this now know more or less what to expect for next year,” Cesarini said.
