Freshman Composition at the University of Maryland

Freshman Composition at the University of MarylandFreshman Composition at the University of Pennsylvania is comprised of a number of different classes, each of which is held on a different topic. Freshman Composition at the University of Maryland is also considered a 'course' but it is actually more of a workshop. Some of the workshops are taught in pairs, others all together.Freshman Composition classes at the University of Maryland (the classes I took) were split up into individual sections. A class section was comprised of one instructor, one student and one group of students, who were assigned to two instructors. One was an instructor from both introductory and senior composition, and the other was a professor who also taught one of the introductory courses in that section.The class was held for four or five days. Each of the sections was held at a different time, which gave the two-and-a-half week course much more flexibility than it would have with a two day class. It was also held in a different place each time, with a different instructor and different classmates.After completing the four or five classes, my first Composition class was held in one of those settings. One of the two instructors we had assigned to us, had to leave his job to return to the United States and stay close to his family. The professor who had taught one of the introductory courses needed some time off and was unable to continue teaching in the class. I joined his class so that I could continue in his place, and then the other section had the other instructor that was teaching the course.The other section had the same instructor and the same course, except for the locations. The instructors were supposed to make up a way to share the course, but they never got around to it.I learned that in class, the professor who was leaving his job was not present at any of the classes that he was teaching. He only wrote notes for the lectures. There was no one there to answer questions that I might have had.I had assumed that the format for Composition classes was to keep the schedule and the content exactly the same from class to class. However, I found out the hard way that the differences between classes could actually be more important than the similarities.This type of format has been modified over the years, as new methods have been introduced, but all of them follow a format of two syllabuses and four classes per year school level. One of the most fundamental changes was in 1991 when the courses in which composition is taught moved from the first year school level to the second year school level. Freshman Composition at the University of Maryland has a more 'revised' format, but I did not really see a big difference in the number of classes that I would take.