seminars

[ecritdansleau]

Next semester I shall be taking my first upper-level seminar in my major (English literature). How are more-advanced level seminars different from the courses to which I'm accustomed? What can I expect to be different in terms of the class structure, grading, discussions, expectations, written work, etcetera

Comments

[homericlaughter]

Expect a lot more discussion, and a lot more reading.

Also, one major paper will probably form the main chunk of the mark. This isn't always true, but in a lot of my upper-year seminars in undergrad, the term paper was usually worth anywhere from 50-100% of the final grade.

[ecritdansleau]

Hmm, I hadn't even thought of that. And I expect one of the challenges with the amount of reading is the fact that the seminar meets only once a week, so of course this means the student has to take the initiative to spread their reading throughout the week.

[homericlaughter]

Yeah, you should probably expect about three to four hours of reading a week. That includes maybe doing up some talking points/discussion questions for each class, since you can likely count on a fair chunk of your grade being based on participation.

[homericlaughter]

Count on more than 5 hours a week to prepare for class if you intend to do more background reading to formulate better discussion points.

[enders_shadow]

Perhaps the mostimportant thing in a classroom is class size.

How big are your lower level classes, and how big is this upper level seminar?

It also depends on the prof. But expect more discussion and less lecture; more reading and perhaps higher quality (tho not necessarily longer) papers.

[ecritdansleau]

Most of my lower level courses have more than thirty students. The seminars have less than twenty, so the course size will be much smaller.

[mallyns]

Papers tend to be about 10 pages min. Grading is harder, because it is an upper level class. You are expected to have a good foundation in the class. For example: There is a 300 level class at my school dealing with Greek and Roman Religion. People who have never taken a classics class have a hard time understanding that modern thoughts do not belong in any discussion, and so forth.

So basically: Huge paper (at least one but sometimes several)
In dept discussion.
Tons of reading at least 100+ pages a week.
Harder grading.
Class size depends on the school.

[meepalicious]

If your professor is anything like mine, don't expect to get any grades back until the end. (Or maybe that's just my professor, I don't know.)

Like the others have said, expect to have way more reading than you're used to and be prepared to bring discussion questions to class.

My advice, if possible: don't take more than one seminar/high level (300+) class if you can avoid it, or at least not until you're used to them. (I made that mistake last semester - bad, bad, bad idea.)