In an email to the student body on Friday, Provost Steve Goldstein '78 and Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Birren announced that Brandeis will join an online consortium in fall 2013. While this board understands the benefits that online learning could bring to our University, we are hesitant about how this technology could best be used to suit the student's needs.
Dean Birren explained that in fall 2013 a student who is off campus for the semester would be able to take a full four classes of credit. However, students who are absent from campus for an entire semester due to illness or internship opportunities likely will lack the time to take an entire semester of courses. It would be more practical for students to be able to take fewer than four courses while away from campus.

Signing up for fewer than four courses may have an additional advantage. If a student majoring in Psychology, for example, is interested in a particular facet of the subject for which Brandeis does not offer a class, he or she could take the class from one of the nine other schools in our online consortium if one of the schools happened to offer it. This would allow students to further explore their fields of study with specific classes that Brandeis might lack.
Furthermore, a student studying abroad would be able to take one or two classes that would go toward his or her major or minor, off-setting the time crunch that some who study abroad feel when trying to finish their requirements.

Additionally, online classes should only be a supplement to in-person classes. Brandeis prides itself on its small class sizes and opportunities to interact with professors. We believe that the growth into the field of online learning could undercut this image. Students should be limited in the number of online courses they can take and the amount of University requirements they can satisfy. The convenience of online courses should not replace the importance of face-to-face interactions with professors.

As this Semester Online will not be put into place until fall 2013, we hope that the administration will consider making some changes to its plan to make this new endeavor most useful for students.