Three 50 minute classes

I have been trying to observe some problems that we experience in our everyday lives, and one problem I have encountered in school was the lack of focus in class. I think that 75 minute classes are a bit ineffective due to the long class time, so I thought about the advantages and disadvantages of 75 minute classes. The advantages was that even excluding class preparation time, there was enough time to cover a lot of material in one class. Another would be that because one class is 75 minutes, we only have classes twice a week. There were also some disadvantages that I found. The most important being the decreasing level of focus towards of the end of class. This would mean that the effectiveness of learning in the last 15 minutes of class drops dramatically. Another is that since we only go to class twice a week, we tend to study for the subject only twice a week, making it easier to forget the contents of the class.

As a solution for this I thought about 50 minute classes instead of 75 minute ones. Three 50 minute classes would solve the problems that are present with the 75 minute class system. First of all, because people tend to become less attentive during the last 15 to 20 minutes of class, focusing for 50 minutes and having a 10 minute break will help students focus throughout the whole class. Moreover, since having 50 minute classes would require three classes per week, we would have an opportunity to review class material more frequently.

However, there is also a potential problem with this system. It is that if too much time is wasted preparing for class in the beginning such as taking attendence, turning the computer on or waiting for students to settle down, there might not be enough time to cover all the necessary materials. A solution to this problem would be to have TA's finish the preparation for class during the break times in between classes. Another would be to have a more strict tardy system to encourage students to be prepared for class by the time class starts.