I have a minor in natural science, and only need one more course to finish it. There were very few options in the course catalog that I could take(Most of my school’s science courses are geared towards nursing and bio majors, I’m majoring in cybersecurity)
I have spoken with the head of my school’s science department about this, and we came to an agreement about me doing independent study about renewable energy.
Has anyone here done independent study in place of a college course? Any advice?
Are you not able to “challenge” a course?
I was able to challenge several courses. Basically took and passed all the tests given for that particular course. IIRC the instructors were not particularly happy but, it was a written rule that I was able to use.
I was only able to do this twice a semester and only for classes without labs, field experience, etc.
I did it once…but I can’t really offer any meaningful advice, other than to find a professor you like and trust. It can be an “easy A” and is a cute way to get some free credits. You get to pick a topic you like and know something about, so you have a head start.
Hope you have as much fun as I did!
My school only offers challenge exams for freshman level courses. I need to take one science course at a junior or senior level to finish my minor.
I have run independent studies from the professor’s side. They can vary a lot from case to case. My advice is to have the requirements explicit from the beginning, set up a regular schedule to communicate with the prof, and stay on top of the work (don’t leave it all to the end).
I did one; there were a wide variety of courses that would theoretically be offered but as semesters ticked by, some of the ones I really had an interest in kept not being taught. And the ones that were sounded like carbon copies of courses I’d already taken.
I was a SUNY student and that worked to my advantage:
• any SUNY student is eligible to enroll in a course provided by a different SUNY campus
• one of the SUNY colleges is wall-to-wall independent study: Empire State College
• the Empire State College brick-and-mortar location was in walking distance of my own campus (Old Westbury State)
I went down and met with a faculty advisor at Empire and after a preliminary discussion came back with a proposed outline of what I would read, what I hoped to learn, and the type of term paper I would bring to her at the end. We agreed we’d meet 4 times during the semester to chat, discuss progress, give me an opportunity to ask on-topic questions, and so forth. She suggested subtopics and some of the text sources.
Yes. Also, keep in mind that YOU should be the one taking the initiative to keep in touch with the supervising professor; professors have a lot to juggle, and by mid-semester, it’s easy for an independent study student to slip off the radar.
Yes, when I was getting my MSEE.
I needed six more credit hours and had three choices:
- Take two more courses. (Yuck.)
- Thesis. (Yuck.)
- Independent study.
I chose #3. It worked out well.
At the time I was very interested in analog circuitry (mainly transistor circuits and op amp circuits). So I designed and built dozens of circuits, and compared my measurements with closed-loop analysis. I actually had fun doing it.
Yes. I did a couple independent study courses with a professor who knew and trusted me to learn the stuff on my own. I also studied by myself and tested out of the first year of Italian.
Don’t know that I have any advice, other than Know Thyself. Will you study the material or will you slack off?
I did an independent study as an undergrad. My major was Music History, and my independent study project was to research and write about a particular melodic mode that’s very common in Scottish and Irish folk dance tunes.
Advice? Sit down with your advisor and hash out the details of your independent study before you do anything else. Make sure you both understand and agree upon your topic, your methods, and the expected output (A paper? An article? A thing? A set of data?) before you start working on the project.
Schedule regular meetings with your advisor during the study period. If it looks like something isn’t working out, or you need to change the parameters of your project, get him or her to sign off on the changes. Last thing you need is to finish your work and be told, “This isn’t what we agreed to.”
I never took such a course, but I did supervise one once and am about to supervise two students in an ad hoc course this fall. The first one came about when I gave a talk on my specialty to the student undergrad math soc and one of the students came and asked if I was willing to supervise him in a reading course on the subject… What I did was assign him to read a book and do all the exercises in the first section of chapter 1. We met once a week and every week I assigned one more section to read another section and do all the exercises. I read his solutions (they were excellent) and we discussed them and if he had any questions. Later, he took a second reading course with me, continuing in the same book. Although the first two chapters were a general introduction to my specialty, the second course got into some very specialized stuff and he lapped it up. He became a grad student and started working with me, then changed his mind, although I continued as a co-advisor. In fact, he just finished his PhD and his advisor told me the thesis was excellent.
I was approached by a students in the spring to do this and we will set it up the same way. We will use a different book, although they have the same first chapter (self-plagiarized). Then a friend of his asked if he could join, so I will have two of them. I had to write a description of what I was going to do and how I would evaluate them. The latter would obviously be on the basis of the exercises they solved. Many are quite easy, but some are demanding. I expect the students to get As, but it is not a given.
Having supervised several project like this as a faculty member, I agree with IvoryTowerDenizen. Definitely negotiate the expected outcomes up front and in writing: what do you need to accomplish to get an A? And make sure you can do it.
You also have to be a bit of a “project manager,” so make yourself a schedule with milestones, and meet with the advisor once every week or two to review your progress.
At my school, it was fairly common for political science students to get six hours of independent study credit if they were actively involved in a campus political group as I was. All that was required was a paper detailing your activities. I’m not even sure Dr. P read it, since the group I was working with was constantly covered in the school newspaper and I wrote some of those press releases. In addition, my picture made the school paper a few times that semester
I did one, in my junior year. It was not an easy “A” - in fact, because there is only one student involved, there is more oversight and scrutiny from the professor (unlike, say, being a student in a class of thirty students, where your essay/paper is just one out of thirty, and so you can slack off in essay writing without the prof noticing.) It was a good experience, but I wouldn’t repeat it. It was tough.
I did, & what a disaster, but then that school was a disaster! Signed up for a summer class; went to the first day of class. It was me & another student standing in the hall; no one else showed up. Okay, maybe we didn’t get the news that today was cxl’d. Went to the second, same thing. March down to the registrar’s office & was told that class hadn’t been offered in the summer in at least three years. WTF? It’s in the catalog & your computer system let me sign up for it. How the eff am I supposed to know it’s not ‘really’ offered? :smack:
Meet with the advisor; ends up I’ll take an independent study with the assistant dean. By the time I meet with him it’s the beginning of the third week of the semester. He wants me to be his [del]bitch[/del], [del]slave[/del] do some research for him. (The first two digits of the year are 1 & 9; there is no Google; don’t think there’s a www.anything yet; not even sure MicroSquash has Windows yet, but maybe.) I easily understand what he wants, trobule is I can’t find any of the info that I’m looking for. I go to see him the beginning of Week 6 only to find out that he’s away on vacation for the next two weeks. Seems he told all of his students this Week 1 but I wasn’t one of his students Week 1, so he never thought to bring it up when I met with him Week 3. :smack:
I need this [del]class[/del] independent study to graduate but I’m not doing the requested paper because I can’t get the underlying data. Am I going to need to start over with another topic? Am I going to need a whole 'nuther semester of college for three lousy credits that they fucked up? I am shitting myself for two weeks until he comes back. He ended up giving me an A for effort/all of their mess.
But that’s only part of the reason I’ll sooner donate to your alma mater than to mine. :mad:
I did it a couple times as an undergrad and several more as a grad student.
It isn’t for everybody. You have to already have a good relationship with the prof. They need know that you’ll actually set things up and carry it out with minimal help from them.
If you’re looking for a way to “get out” of doing a standard course or some such, forget it.
No. I am doing this as a way to study something that my school doesn’t offer.
So, were any of the suggestions posted here useful?
Yes. I appreciate the answers i got, and i plan on doing this course next spring, so i have plenty of time to plan ahead with the professor.
At my undergraduate school (New College in Sarasota, Florida), it’s standard to do several independent study courses during your time at the college. Each student has to do three one-month-long independent study courses during the ISP (independent study period) which is in January. They also have to do a senior thesis which is close to being an independent study course. They can also do independent study courses during the fall or spring semesters. They sometimes do courses at other universities for a summer or a semester or an ISP. I presume that the rule still holds that an independent study course is anything that you and one professor agree is a good course, a major is anything that you and two professors agree is a good major, and a senior thesis is anything that you and three professors agree is a good thesis. During each semester, you and your sponsor (a professor) have to have a contract for what regular and/or independent study courses you will take that semester. Independent study course can vary between learning everything in a standard textbook to doing significant research: