For the first two weeks of every semester, we partake in a phenomenon that is best described as academic speed-dating: shopping period. As we go from class to class, making snap judgments about our interest in the subject or chemistry with the professor, we’re forced to balance our academic passions with new curiosities and scheduling constraints.
Shopping period is idyllic on paper. It’s a chance to explore the incredible breadth of Brown’s rigorous curriculum without worrying about attendance policies or course-change fees. It embodies Brown’s coupled values of academic excellence and intellectual curiosity. In practice, however, shopping period betrays both. The so-called freedom of shopping period is impossible to exercise completely — hopping around campus, we inevitably miss the foundational material covered in introductory classes. As I watch my peers try to make it to every class on Courses@Brown, wishing we had Hermione Granger’s Time Turner, I see an obvious solution: Brown should mandate lecture capture for all courses during shopping period.
The stress of shopping period can easily cause students to pare down their shopping carts to simplify the course selection process. In his recent column, C.J. Lair ’28 argues for the importance of exploring a varied intellectual path. As young scholars at the beginning of our academic journeys, we want to avoid boxing ourselves in, so experimentation is especially valuable. The comfort of knowing we can experience a class even while shopping for others would help us feel comfortable diversifying our course lists.
The idea of shopping period hinges on having a lenient attendance policy for the first two weeks. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to visit different classes and “shop” properly. But anticipating that students will miss at least part of class leaves Brown professors with two unsatisfying options: accept that some students won’t be present when they teach the fundamentals of the course, or water down lectures for the first two weeks so students won’t miss too much. This bind means that shopping period undermines Brown’s academic rigor, but lecture capture easily remedies this. With classes recorded, professors could teach during shopping period with the assurance that students will be able to catch up.
In turn, students could shop without the fear of being at a disadvantage for the rest of the semester. Right now, classes during shopping period are often structured differently than they are throughout the rest of the term in order to make room for introductory overviews about coursework and class expectations. Getting only a glimpse of each class as you scramble to get a peak at another inescapably leaves students missing the important details. With the support of lecture capture, students would still be able to thoroughly sample classes that are held at concurrent times, just in a virtual fashion.
There are ample possibilities when it comes to the logistics of capturing and distributing recorded lectures. Already, about 40 classrooms across campus have automatic lecture capture technology. For those that do not, professors can simply set up a Zoom recording, and screen record their slides with a voiceover, or even record directly from their laptop or phone camera. Sure, it would be an extra, perhaps slightly inconvenient step for faculty members, but one they only need to take for two weeks. And while the video and audio quality might not measure up to an official lecture capture, it doesn’t need to. The purpose of these shopping period recordings is not for students to be able to take a full course asynchronously, but merely to serve as a backup for when they need to miss one class to shop another.
Don’t get me wrong, nothing beats being able to shop classes in-person. As Max Mooney ’29 wrote last spring, the benefits of going to class are unmatched — from meeting new friends to getting to know some of Brown’s exceptional professors — but shopping period isn’t comparable to the rest of the semester, and we must adjust accordingly.
Although, ideally, the University would start handing out Time Turners with our room keys, having access to recorded lectures for a short two weeks would help the Open Curriculum live up to its name and allow us to truly embrace the magic of shopping period.
Maya Tkachenko can be reached at maya_tkachenko@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
