Shop till you drop

The best way to reduce the stress associated with shopping period and increase its utility to students would be to retool shopping period completely. Aside from the fact that you can add and drop courses more or less at will, shopping period is currently like any other part of the semester. That means going to class, reading and writing response papers or doing problem sets. Failure to do this for every class one is shopping can spell doom, but the simple feat of going to every lecture isn't always physically possible, and the drastically increased workload can be nerve-wracking. A first week of lightened courses intended solely as samples would certainly be more useful to students than the current system. Unfortunately, changing shopping period as just described would require changing the calendar, a task on par with untangling the Gordian knot.

There is, however, a very simple tool the University could provide to help students decide more quickly, and with more information, on their final course selection: The Office of the Registrar should make all syllabi accessible online to all students. A syllabus is the most informative document on the nature of the course: It details the book list, grading policies, assignments and expectations, giving students a much fuller picture than the short course descriptions in the course guide. Generally speaking, syllabi are already available online via Blackboard, but only to students enrolled in a class, so heaven help you if you're shopping several courses that meet at the same time. Technically, you could sign up for a course, download the syllabus, get an adviser to sign a course add/drop request (most students skip this step despite SCORE's warning), switch courses on SCORE, wait three hours for Blackboard to register the new course and repeat. Since the vast majority of syllabi exist as digital files, though, making them available online to all students would require minimal effort with high returns on efficiency.

Later on, the internet could serve to streamline shopping period even further by making videos or audio recordings of every class' first lecture available online as well. I understand why professors might be reluctant to allow all of their lectures to be recorded. But the first lecture is indispensable for getting a feel for the course and the lecturer. It isn't always possible to go to the first lecture of every course one is considering, especially if the course conflicts with another or if a student begins to seriously consider the course only after classes have started. Putting just the first lecture of each course online would allow students to effectively attend as many first lectures as they were interested in, regardless of when they met. If professors are concerned about their intellectual property, these lectures could be made available exclusively on cluster computers. Such a plan would require infrastructure investments and time but would ultimately increase students' ability to choose wisely and quickly.

Currently students have the option of choosing their courses and changing their minds, which is a good thing, but the process by which this is achieved is wildly inefficient. Here I have suggested three plans that would go a long way toward alleviating the stress associated with shopping period and helping students make well-informed decisions more quickly. Some of these solutions are more easily implemented than others, but in the long run, a more efficient shopping period would help not only students, but professors who would be able to gauge their classes sooner, not to mention be spared students who hastily switched in at the last minute without realizing what the course was really about.

Martha Vega-Gonzalez is a history major from New York, N.Y. She can be reached at mvega@princeton.edu.