Students have certainly wished that their courses could just fly by. With Winterim, courses can go by very quickly, though they take a lot of work. Nancy Betchart and Gail Carr of the Frost School answer questions about the ins and outs of Winterim courses.
The Clock: What are some of the advantages of taking Winterim courses?
Nancy Betchart: Winterim is an option for students to get ahead, to focus all their energy on one course, all their attention on one course, or make up time if they’ve lost time, you know, if they’ve changed majors and they’re behind and they want to graduate on time, they can take courses in the Winterim and in an intensive format and get that done. What’s really been growing rapidly are the online courses in the Winterim, and I think it’s because students – they can stay at home, have a long break and they can still access a course and take a course and complete it.
Other students like to be on campus during Winterim because they want to enjoy the outdoor skiing and that kind of thing. And some of those students, even if they’re here on campus like the online classes because then they can go skiing during the day and then access a course during the evening. But what we’ve always had prior to now is – we didn’t have a way for students to pay for their course online, and so they had to register in person.
What we’re finding is that a lot of the day students like this – the format and the schedule that our courses are offered in. For example, the online courses will fill up really fast. The student might enjoy the face to face classes, but if they take one class online or one class in a blended format, it frees up their schedule just a little for if they’re trying to fit in sports or working, that kind of thing.
Another advantage, I think, of Winterim courses can be if there’s a challenging course that you feel you really need to focus all your attention just on that one course and not be distracted by a lot of other courses, we have an opportunity to do that. Some of those courses meet face to face or in a blended format, but typically those courses would meet every single day when they can.
TC: When was Winterim established?
NB: We’ve had Winterim, I think, since the early 1970’s here.
Gail Carr: 1972. That’s the first Winterim. We had to heat the buildings anyway, and the year before that was my freshman year in college and I was here. And we went through Christmas, then we took a week off and came back, we had like two weeks of classes and a week of finals, and then we went right in to the spring semester. So the following year, they decided – they changed the calendar so there was a gap in between the two semesters. It was long enough, so they figured “Gee, well, the students need courses, the buildings need heat, we might as well mesh the two,” and so they started Winterim. They were really unique courses that started then, everything from Your Family Tree: An Introduction to Geneaology, Beginning Chess, Pocket Billiards, The Year-Round School, Interpersonal Education, Negotiations and Education Literature, The Bible, you know. It was all different kinds of things, but the price was right. It was $60 a credit, and you could get textbooks for $1.95. Those were the days.
TC: What is the Frost School, the branch of PSU that organizes Winterim?
NB: The Frost School was established a little over two years ago to provide better access to adult and non-traditional students and working students as more and more students need to work while they’re trying to go to school. Many of them can’t devote time to taking classes Monday, Wednesday, Friday, fifty minute periods. They need to take classes in larger chunks, like one night a week, or you have online format or blended format so that they can fit in work and family responsibilities.
So that’s why we were established, because more and more the adults in New Hampshire need to get better access to Plymouth. I think it’s only about 25% of adults in New Hampshire have a bachelor’s degree, and it gets lower the further north you go in Coos County. So we offer four of Plymouth State’s degree programs right now, evenings, weekends and online and in blended formats, and we hope to add another one soon. We hope to add Tourism Management and Policy. Right now we have Business Administration, Criminal Justice, Communication Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies programs.
But the Frost School was built on a long history of the continuing ed. division, which included Winterim and Summer, and continuing ed. students or students who are not matriculated into degree programs but are just taking courses.
TC: How do you pay for Winterim courses, and how much are the courses?
NB: When you pay for your tuition, when you’re a full-time student, you just pay tuition for the fall and you pay tuition for the spring. If you want to take a course in the Winterim or in the summer, you pay by the credit. Because we don’t know what students would be taking until they register, they were required to pay the Bursar at the same time as they were registering, so they would have to do that in person. So we’re really happy that IT has now developed the mechanism for payment online so that students can register online. It’s going to be a much easier process for students.
GC: It’s only a ten percent differential between in-state and out-of-state, which is a real advantage to non-residents.
NB: The fees are lower for out-of-state students, the tuition. [The costs for non-residents are $336 per credit and $308 per credit for residents.]
GC; Because Winterim and summer are not supported by the state dollars that come to the institution for fall and spring. So Winterim and summer have to support themselves. The faculty volunteer to teach and then they are paid for the students that are in their classes.
TC: How does the new online registration work?
NB: There will be step-by-step instructions once you register online. It will say “Click here to pay now.” There will be a process and it will be easy to put in there either credit card or e-check information.
I was talking to Pat Cate, our advisor, this morning about some advantages that he sees, and he sees the advantage of students being able to plan out and register for the Winterim and the spring at the same time, basically. I mean, you go in and you select the term code for Winterim and choose what you’re going to take, and then you go back in and select the term code for the spring, and you can register for the spring.
Our students, the Frost School students, who may be taking classes part-time, because they’re working and have families, are planning their schedules more year-round, “What am I going to take fall, winter, spring and summer?” and they take courses year-round. It will be really handy for students to be able to do this, and they can actually register all the way through Christmas while they’re at home.
Unfortunately, some students will figure out that they didn’t do so well in a class this fall that they need to repeat. If they figure that out while they’re home over Christmas, they can register online and pay. Or if they just make up their mind, “Gee, I think I’d like to try to get ahead,” they can do that. For the fall and spring term, students always need a PIN number. For the Winterim and the summer now, you will not need a PIN number. You just go straight in and you can register. You will be limited, though, just to the maximum credits.
TC: How many classes are students allowed to take during Winterim, and what should they know about taking classes during Winterim?
GC: [Students can have] four and a half credits during Winterim and nine during the summer. So you can get permission to overload, but with a thirteen day Winterim, I want to make sure students don’t set themselves up for a problem. So perhaps a three-credit course might be the way to go this Winterim.
NB: I think that students need to remember that they are doing a full semester’s worth of study in this three week period. So it’s not like going to class once a week or twice a week. You’re pretty much involved in your class every day.
GC: You miss one class and it’s like missing a week.
NB: So students who sign up for Winterim should be prepared to participate in their class every day. That doesn’t mean all day long every day, but they should check in and be involved. Certainly most of the face-to-face classes meet most days. There is a Martin Luther King holiday in there that they’re off, and the online class students would be checking in almost every day in order to be successful.
GC: One other thing that is, I think, a plus for students this year is that they should be able to see, when they’re looking at the variety of classes – if it has a code that’s GUAR, it will tell that it’s guaranteed.
NB: Which means that it won’t be cancelled regardless of how many students are [signed up]. So it means that there could be only two or three students signed up and it will still run. The faculty members guaranteed that they will deliver the class regardless.
TC: How many courses are offered this year, and when can students register?
GC: The thirteen days of Winterim, yes. We have 91 courses on the books for Winterim, and 34 of them are either blended or totally online, so we’re about a third of the way. Blended means there’s some component of it that is a face to face class and the rest of it is done online.
It’s also a good time for students to do maybe a three-credit practicum or a three credit internship experience. Sometimes students like to go home and do an internship in a business or certain organization and they have that opportunity to do about three credits worth in those three to three and a half weeks. Internships, I think, are a wonderful opportunity, because you get to kind of experience the environment in the work situation without really being there for a long period of time so it’s kind of a quick snapshot, a picture of what the future could be, and for some students, they come back and they had a wonderful experience. For others, they look at it and go, “Now I know that’s what I don’t want to do,” which, both learning opportunities are very valuable.
NB: Registration for Winterim [began] on November 3rd. In the past, we’d had to close it down when we weren’t on campus, because the office is pretty much closed over the Christmas holiday. This year, because we’re going to have online registration, you can register at home in your pajamas on Christmas Eve if you want to.
GC: Midnight, any night, go for it.
NB: So it will be open ’til 8 a.m. on Monday, January 5th, the day that Winterim starts.
GC: People can still register that day.
NB: They could register, but they would have to get Joyce, the registrar, said they’d have to come in, I think. So again, I think that the advantages are that students can do this on their own time, they can get in easily, they can see how many spots are remaining. They will have to pay when they register.