Shorter Sessions and Moving Entry Points

Someone recently asked me to think about shorter sessions and moving entry points.

Here are my thoughts:

1. We have to identify courses than lend themselves to a modular environment. Or, transition to it.
2. More importantly, we should separate learning events from assessment events. Or at least not tie them to each other. Why does someone have to wait until we are past the unit to be assessed? That’s the thinking behind this.

With these two things in mind (and others) in trying to change a semester model, I would start by

1. Making online courses 8 weeks (period, whether or not they will be modularized). This fits in the current semester model. With this, a student that is two weeks late for the semester can start in 6 weeks. Although, I think 6 weeks is too long, so maybe have 4-week modules in an 8-weeks course, so that the student can start half way without a problem or we can have 8-week courses starting every 4 weeks. 
2. For that last thought and maybe in general, we cannot offer things that give student too many choices at the same time. Why dilute our offerings by having too many choices? So, instead of offering 262 and 263 at the same time and having 10ish in each, we offer 262 now and 263 alternating to it. This is only for those low enrolling courses. Of course, we have classes that we can run all year long and be full (ENGL, MATH, BIOL, etc). 
3. Ok, so now we have, hopefully, been able to create learning events and assessments that can be done in 4-week modules inside an 8-week course. So, we move this to the local environment. Assessments would remain online while learning events happen in the classroom (easy, right?). Well, it would require faculty to follow the same 8-week course schedule that was done already, so we (and students) would know what will be thought each live-session of the 8 weeks. Now, students can either start a course half way or wait until the next one begins. If we can have starts every 4 weeks, then I would do that.