What professors actually think about shopping period
It's safe to say every Brown student loves and hates shopping period. On the one hand, professors tend to give less work and you have the opportunity to try tons of different classes before settling on what you're actually going to take. On the other hand, figuring out which 4 of the 2,000 courses offered at Brown you want to spend the rest of your semester in is not easy by any means.But what do professors think about it? To find out, I interviewed three professors here at Brown about their feelings about the first two weeks of each semester.The Professors:
Tracy BretonA former reporter at the Providence Journal, Professor Breton has taught journalism at Brown for 18 years. Her courses include Journalistic Writing and Reporting Crime and Justice.
Robert MalleProfessor Malle has taught at Brown in the CLPS department for seven years. His courses include the wildly popular Social Psychology.
Susan Kushner ResnickVisiting Lecturer Susan Kushner Resnick has taught at Brown in the English department for six years. She teaches Intro to Creative Nonfiction, among other courses. All three professors seemed to agree on one thing: while shopping period can be a mixed bag, the positives tend to outweigh the negatives. These profs praised shopping period for giving students the opportunity to get the necessary information about each class so that they can make informed decisions about what they should take."This is what Brown is about: the concept that students are adults that can make choices for themselves," Malle said. The professors also noted that shopping period in tandem with the lack of core requirements at Brown means that the students who show up to a class on the first day tend to be very invested and passionate about the subject matter.However, shopping period isn't without its downsides. The process of registration and capping courses can be a huge pain for some professors, as Kushner Resnick characterized by noting that she once had "70 students show up on the first day for a class that was capped at 17." This can be frustrating, especially since Kushner Resnick also explained that "at least half of the people registered for one of her courses will end up dropping it, especially upperclassmen."Breton went into further detail, describing how the priority preregistration given to upperclassmen "often fills up classes with students who will never actually show up but who also won't remove their names from the course list. This means that the courses always look full, which discourages underclassmen from shopping courses they very well might be able to get into."Breton thinks doing away with preregistration might be best."If we have shopping period, there really isn't a reason to have preregistration at all," she said.Too many people showing up on the first day isn't really something that has a huge effect on large lecture classes, such as the one that Malle teaches, but he did note a separate issue that arises from reckless shopping. In Malle's Social Psychology class, which is capped at 300, differences between the preregistration expectations of how many people will take the course and the actual enrollment can create issues with TA distribution. This is because TA's are assigned to classes based on preregistration numbers, so fluctuations in actual enrollment, especially in the second week of shopping period, can cause TA's who have already begun working on one course's material to be switched to another or for courses to go without sufficient TA support.
After a few years of handling shopping period, all three professors seemed to develop the same tactic for dealing with students on the first day: make a detailed syllabus and make sure everyone reads it. Malle even described his first lecture of every semester as "just an incredibly painful reading of my 9-page syllabus."The professors agreed that the best way to handle the inconveniences of shopping period is to make sure that each student knows what they're signing up for as quickly as possible. Breton actually gives an assignment due the next day for anyone who wants to take Journalistic Writing. Students quickly come to understand what to expect in terms of the course's workload.The professors' biggest advice to students navigating the tricky waters of shopping period is to read the syllabus, show up on the first day, and commit as soon as you can. Malle said he "prefers the people who come on the first day and leave halfway through to the people who come a few classes late and stay the whole time."Images via, via, via, via, via, and via
