Time Management

Effective time management is a key to success in most areas of life and this is particularly true of academic life. The step-up from the workload of high school to that demanded by most university courses is quite dramatic. The class schedule alone is a major adjustment, with classes running from 8 a.m. till 5 p.m., in some cases. That being said, the first-year class schedules for the Bachelor of Arts degree are significantly less taxing than those for a Bachelor of Science or an Engineering degree, or even for the BA Drama. Nonetheless, the English 178 students find it especially difficult to “manage the conflicting workloads of [their] courses” (Survey Question 19).

41% of the students reported feeling „neutral‟ about their preparedness to balance the time requirements of their various courses, while 22% felt poorly prepared and only 37% felt that they were well prepared. Part of the problem with time management in the Arts Faculty is that subjects like English, Political Science and Philosophy might not be time consuming in terms of hours spent in the classroom, in comparison to subjects like Physics or Chemistry, but they do require a large amount time for reading and essay assignments. This means that, unlike students studying in the Sciences Faculty, Arts faculty students need to manage their own time more effectively, as they have more time outside of classroom time. Perhaps this extra time outside of the classroom makes it harder for students to sit down and work, especially when they have got into the habit of not working in the afternoons, as a result of playing sport, for instance, after school.

One worries that students are not being productive until just before a deadline, when they fly into a panic, sacrificing all other subjects in order to complete the assignment that is due. 66 This is clearly not an example of effective time management or the balancing of workloads for the various courses, but for those students who still manage to receive the marks they desire, it appears to work. The problem of balancing the various courses is exacerbated when students cannot accurately estimate how long a task will take them. From

66 _{From my own personal experience I know this situation all too well, and it is a habit I fear I developed and} honed during my own undergraduate years.

the survey responses it is clear that estimating the “time required to complete an English 178 assignment” is a problem (Survey Question 20). However, this is not as much of an issue as “completing the required reading” for the course (Survey Question 21). 19% of students reported that they felt poorly prepared for the former, while 26% described their preparedness to complete the set-work texts as “poor” (Figures A.2.30 & A.2.31). These students are surely struggling to hand in work which of the highest standard they are capable of, simply because they are running out of time.

In their interviews, some students echoed these problems with English 178, stating that while “difficulty wise it was not too hard, [it] was just the workload” that made it difficult (Interview 4: Students)67. This workload also results in stronger students not taking English at a second- and third-year levels as they perceive that “the workload is too much to handle with all [their] other courses” (Qualitative Survey Data 7). One of the stronger students who came for the student interviews had this to say about the course and why she would not be continuing with English 278 in second year:

I was really busy with res[idence] stuff and campus stuff and you know the other subjects were do-able, like you can plan for your one essay per term for Political Science, like this week I am going to do it. But for English [there was] one or two per week, so you are really not quite sure if you want to get involved in other stuff again. The Workload! [Sighs]68.

(Interview 4: Students)

This raises the issue of balancing academic demands and social life to ensure an enjoyable university experience, but the social aspects are not just limited to activities outside the classroom. In English 178 in particular, the tutorials can become quite sociable: many students are able to strike up a rapport with the other students in the class and the tutor can also have a significant effect on the students‟ enjoyment of the course. The student comment

67 _{The students who came for the voluntary interviews were as a rule the more conscientious students from my} 2011 tutorial classes, which is why it is difficult to gauge the perceptions of the course as a whole from them. This is one of the reasons why I have preferred to use the Survey feedback as the primary means of evaluating student perceptions of preparedness.

68 _{This particular student‟s final marks for English 178 was 70% and she did not go on to take English 278 in} 2012, though she is still very active with campus activities.

above also highlights the fact that English 178 appears to be the most writing-intensive of all their first-year courses.