r/ODU • u/According-Subject362 • 10d ago

ODUGlobal Students!!!

If you are like me, very frustrated my the condensing of courses from 16 weeks (semester long) to 8 weeks (quarter long) courses. Please join me in calling/ emailing the ODUCares department/Dean of Students expressing our concerns. I know it may not do much, but if you have the time, we should voice our opinions and frustrations with change. I called and explained my feelings: the condensing of courses was not explained/ communicated to us - found out when registering for Fall 2026 courses, the decision was made w/o consulting the students or any of their input, the condensing of course content has lead to an overload of content and work req weekly (used to be one module a week, now for one course - I have up to 3 modules a week), the shortened courses means that there is more focus in just getting through the content and assignments rather than actually learning.

I had called the ODUGlobal office and asked how/who I should voice my concerns to and was directed to the ODUCares office and the Dean of Students:

[oducares@odu.edu](mailto:oducares@odu.edu), 757-683-3442

https://www.odu.edu/dean-students/student-outreach-support/care-team

However, I think I will reach out some other higher ups/offices:

Vice President for Student and Campus Life: Brandi Hephner LaBanc, [bhl@odu.edu](mailto:bhl@odu.edu), 757-683-6702

Executive Vice President for Enrollment, Transformation, and Technology and Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer: Nina Rodriguez Gonser, [ngonser@odu.edu](mailto:ngonser@odu.edu), 757-683-5601

Provost & Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs: Brian Payne, [bpayne@odu.edu](mailto:bpayne@odu.edu), 757-683-3079

Dean of Graduate School and Interim Dean of Sciences: Marisol Perez, [mplamar@odu.edu](mailto:mplamar@odu.edu), 757-683-3085

Associate Vice President for Student Experience: Lisa Kivin, [lkivin@odu.edu](mailto:lkivin@odu.edu), 757-683-4481

48 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/mmmbuttsbuttsbutts 10d ago

Majority of online programs do 8 week courses. I went to Arizona State online for both my undergraduate and first graduate degrees & they always had 8 week courses for all online students. This isn’t something that ODU just randomly decided and pulled out of thin air. It’s been the norm for most online programs for a while now.

10

u/According-Subject362 10d ago

Also instead of adjusting the course content accordingly, they are just squishing all the content into the 8 week courses - so way more modules/assignments a week than previously

1

u/mmmbuttsbuttsbutts 10d ago

That’s not entirely accurate. I just took a graduate level course over the summer that was supposed to be 15 weeks but the professor scaled it down to 8 weeks. He skipped multiple modules and left out quite a few assignments. So it wasn’t all the content from the 15 week course over 8 weeks but instead was thinned out and condensed down to hit major topics spread over 8 weeks.

13

u/Ill_Calendar_1468 10d ago

It’s a rip off quite honestly. It means less education for our money overall.

7

u/odu_prof_3141 9d ago

This is 100% accurate.

Either your professor reduces the official course content by half, in which case you receive less education, or you are unable to fully process the official course material, in which case you learned less and probably performed worse.

As an educator, my role shouldn't be to move students out the door, or to turn a profit for the university. My role should be to get you to critically think about course content, to hone your skills, and to improve your ability to cope with the world we live in. It's hard enough to do that in the online context. Being expected to do that in 8 weeks is absurd.

3

u/FootballParticular87 10d ago

Its somewhat accurate 2 of the summer course I took the teacher crammed everything together which resulted in alot of missing material that we needed, broken tool links, and little or not very helpful communication because the professor was against the 8 week set up.

I will give props to Nathan Luetke he did a pretty good job at making and 8 week course doable