The practice of offering the seminar as a graded, credit-bearing course has
three major advantages: (a) It enhances the seminar s credibility in the
eyes of students because normal college courses are offered for credits
and grades. (b) Course credit and a course grade serve as incentives which
increase the quantity and intensity of student effort, and elevates faculty
expectations for student commitment and performance, both of which should
combine to magnify the seminar's positive impact on student development. (c) Evidence suggests that students prefer to take the seminar for credit and a
course grade (Carney & Weber, 1987). It is noteworthy that the University of South Carolina's first-year seminar which has served as a national and
international model for first-year seminars was changed from a pass-fail to
letter-graded course to accommodate student preferences (Berman, 1993).
John Gardner, pioneer of the first-year experience movement, points out
another very important reason why first-year seminar should be offered for
college credit: "There is also a possible moral issue . . . of requiring
students to participate in an activity, charging them money for it, but
denying them degree credit for it while at the same time telling them that
it's good medicine and they need to take it" (1989, p. 246, italics added).
Anticipate and Counter Course Objections
When arguing for the seminar as a credit-bearing course, it is important
to anticipate common objections and be prepared to counter them in an
authoritative (and socially sensitive) manner. Listed below are two of the
most common objections to the first-year seminar are cited and suggested
counter-arguments are provided.
Common Objection #1. The first-year seminar is a remedial or
developmental course, therefore it should not carry college credit.
For critics who employ this argument, let them be reminded that research
on the first-year seminar indicates that it benefits students of all levels
of academic ability (Fidler & Hunter, 1989; Fidler, 1990). Students at all
levels of academic preparedness benefit from grappling with topics like "the
meaning and value of liberal education" because such information is neither
covered in high school, nor is it explicitly covered anywhere in the
undergraduate curriculum. (Or in the graduate curriculum, for that matter,
resulting in the cruel irony that most college faculty are not conversant
with this central goal of the undergraduate experience--including the
present author--until he began teaching the topic in first-year seminar!).
There are also "undecided" students among the academically well-prepared who still need to sort out the complex relationships among college majors, future careers, and personal interests, aptitudes, and values. Even honors students report significant stress related to time-management adjustments during their first year of college (Stephens & Eison, 1986-1987). John Gardner (1989) eloquently sums up a key counter-argument to the charge that the first-year seminar is a remedial or developmental course:
Freshmen cannot learn to cope with college professors before they get there. High school teachers are different from college teachers, and freshmen cannot possibly become oriented to an institution before they arrive. They cannot learn how to take college lecture notes if they have not been lectured to in high school. Finally it should be noted that all education and course work are developmental in the sense that they develop the student's intellectual and personal capacities. All college work should be regarded as remedial, for it is remedying existing levels of ignorance and lack of knowledge (p. 245).
Common Objection #2. The first-year seminar is an applied, not an
academic course.
Critics should also be reminded of the fact that academic credit is
now offered for other college courses that are patently "applied" in nature
(e.g., computer programming, physical education, and cardiopulmonary
resuscitation). Academic purists are sometimes inclined to assume that an
educational experience is synonymous with an academic experience, but the
former is a much more inclusive concept that embraces learning experiences
other than those involving traditional content-centered, chalk-and-talk
classroom instruction.
Gordon and Grites (1984) argue eloquently for the course's
credit-bearing value,
To determine the credit value of a freshman seminar course, ask yourself to identify an undergraduate course you had that you are not using in your work today. If you can identify only one, you are very fortunate. The skills, attitudes, and knowledge learned in a freshman seminar usually outlive those learned in many other courses because they are used daily (p. 317).
Comparability with other college courses may also be addressed by ensuring that the nature of student work in the first-year seminar is comparable to that required of students in other academic credit-bearing courses. As Gardner notes with respect to first-year seminars,
These courses can be made as academic as the designers choose. There are all sorts of opportunities for freshman seminars to provide instruction and learning opportunities by such traditional means as required readings, required writing, testing, book reviews, oral reports, written reports, keeping journals [and] writing term papers (1989, p. 247).
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