Many college programmes are structured around a set of core courses, which are compulsory, and a small set of optional courses that one can choose from. In most cases, the range of options is quite small. But in some institutions you may have quite a few possibilities. Of course, often there is only an illusion of choice, and you are forced to take one or another course because it’s the only one that fits into your schedule, or, it’s a course that is listed in the institution’s prospectus but it hasn’t been offered for years because there is no teacher available.
But let’s say you actually have a true open choice and you can select from three or four or more courses; and even better, your schedule gives you a fair amount of flexibility. How do you decide what to take?
Let’s think this through systematically, keeping in mind your own motivations as a student or emerging professional. First, consider the optional courses within your home discipline or department. These should equip you with a foundation in the field, while the optional courses are value additions that can do a couple of different things. They can broaden your understanding, exposing you to new areas or emerging issues in the discipline. They can also deepen your understanding of a specific aspect of the field, giving you the opportunity to go further into something that has been introduced in a core course.
So let’s say you are studying mass media and have taken a core course in basic radio production. An optional such as Radio Documentary Production would give you a higher level of skill (deepen your understanding) in the same area, while Media Marketing would introduce you to a different area of media practice (broaden your understanding). Generally, the advice would be to develop a deeper understanding in a sub-field that is particularly interesting to you, while also choosing some courses that give you a broad appreciation of the field. If you are pretty sure you want to build a career in radio production, it would be a good idea to take the first option, while if you are more interested in getting a broad based media education, you might choose the second.
Interdisciplinary exposure
What if you have the opportunity to take courses outside your own discipline? If you are in a large university with what is known as a “choice-based credit system,” the field is actually wide open for you to take any course in any subject that does not have pre-requisites. So, a sociology student might be able to take some literature or anthropology courses and a business student might be able to take a media or history course. The choice here could be based on your level of intellectual adventurousness or a strategy to develop your skills/understanding in a specific area that is complementary to your own discipline. Think about the level of “synergy” between the course you want to take and the field you want to work in. If you are a media student who is interested in advertising, it might be useful to take courses in psychology or business. Or if you are a sociology student with an interest in tribal societies, you might take a course in anthropology or history. Here too, the logic of “deepening” or “broadening” could apply. Does the course allow you to dive deeper into a specific area of interest or does it widen your horizons by introducing you to something completely new?
Ultimately, it is important to build a course portfolio that gives you the best combination of breadth and depth, along with some variety to satisfy your intellectual curiosity. But, of course, there are many other reasons why we might want to select a particular option over others — your friends are taking it, you like the teacher, you have heard it is an easy course, it lets you get home early...
But weren’t we talking strategy and logic here?
The author teaches at the University of Hyderabad and edits Teacher Plus. usha.bpgll@gmail.com