Block Scheduling Vs. Traditional Scheduling

What is the best way to plan an academic curriculum? Should students be made to absorb a little bit of information about a variety of topics, or varying amounts of information depending on the topics relevance to the student? These two methodologies manifest themselves in the following two forms: traditional academic scheduling and block scheduling. Block scheduling is defined as students attending different academic classes daily on a weekly basis. Traditional academic scheduling is when the student takes the same classes repeatedly on a daily basis. Classroom integration, transition time, and feasible workload are but a few of the reasons why each of these curriculum planning methods has become so important to their supporters.

Integration of the teacher with the classroom is a very important aspect of any learning environment. In traditional academic scheduling a student would see his or her teacher for a set amount of time on a daily basis. In block scheduling a student would spend varying amounts of time with a teacher. This is dependent upon how important the school the school considers that topic to be to the student. This provides block scheduling with an advantage because it creates an environment where students are more connected to the topics that are most important to them. A great example of this is that in traditional academic scheduling, a student studying music would spend just as much time with his or her music teacher as with his or her physical education teacher. This is of course not beneficial to the students because they are spending more time with the topics that do not interest them. This situation can also create an apathetic environment for some teachers (where the students are not interested in the topic, and therefore do not participate), and this would have a negative effect on the students that truly enjoyed that topic.

A great amount of time is wasted in transition no matter which approach a school takes in regards to its curriculum. This wasted time is caused by not only the time it takes students to get from class to class, but also by the time it takes for the students' minds to readjust to learning a different subject matter. Block scheduling is in this sense a far more efficient way of planning a curriculum because it has students learning a fewer amount of topics each day and thus wastes less time transitioning throughout the course of a traditional day. Traditional scheduling creates a greater number of transition periods throughout the course of a day, thus wasting an enormous amount of time that does not necessarily need to be wasted.

Homework is generally defined as the work, or projects that students are required to do in their free time. In a traditional schedule students must turn in their homework assignments every day. In a block schedule students often only turn their homework in once a week (because the classes only meet once a week). As a side note, this could be one of the reasons why a research study at Colorado State University shows that average attendance rates at block schools are generally higher. This situation is very beneficial to both the student and the teacher because classroom time is only used for instruction. Instead of giving out work designed to keep the students busy, the teacher gives the students only enough exercises for them to feel comfortable with the topic. This allows everyone's time to be used more efficiently, and significantly reduces the amount of time wasted throughout the year.

Block scheduling is so uncommon in the US that many people are not aware of its existence. Likewise "traditional" academic scheduling is so uncommon in many other parts of the world that many people do not know what it is. The primary reason that schools do not often convert between the two curriculum is that they are often entirely incompatible with each other and are still around only because of historical reasons. That is to say if every student had been learning a particular science unit over the course of 3 years (block scheduling) by meeting for two hours twice a week they would not be able to easily convert to learning the same subject matter in half a year by meeting on a daily basis. This factor alone has caused many schools to continue on with established traditions and not analyze the benefits of switching curriculum schedules.

Just as two different tools can often be used to accomplish the same task, both curriculum scheduling techniques can be used to teach the same material. And just as one of these tools might take a little more effort (time) to accomplish one task, one of these scheduling methods seems to consume more time than the other. This factor, as well as the tremendous amount of flexibility and specialization offered, has led many schools to break with tradition, and convert from their outdated academic schedules to a more specialized block scheduling system.