Classes, One at a Time

The way HiOA’s education system is structured is very different to the one I am used to at Northeastern. Classes have different amounts of credits and requirements, making it difficult to simply choose your classes during Registration Day. Most classes are worth 15 Norwegian credits and usually transfer back to Boston as two classes. Therefore, I only have two courses in total this semester! Most students at HiOA do not have electives or the ability to choose their classes. They choose their major before starting their college career and have to take specific classes each semester with a plan already elaborated for all students in the program. Instead of four years of college, bachelor degrees in Norway consist of six semesters and students graduate in less than three years.

The college experience is much more relaxed over here than in Boston, and maybe the U.S. in general. The semester is divided into two and you take one class at a time. My Political Ecology class began the third week of August and I will have the final exam on October 13. Then, my second class on Capitalist Development begins and ends on December 5. This schedule makes it possible to focus on one topic at a time and really absorb the material being learned. I have classes on Tuesday and Friday each week for about two hours. At first, I assumed this would result in a significant amount of free time, but it did not work out to be this way because students are assigned a seemingly endless amount of readings each week. They are so long that it is not feasible to do a “cram session” two days before the exam. I usually do my readings every weekday in the morning and I have the rest of the time free to travel or explore the city. It is also possible to do the readings for each week in one or two days and travel for four days in between classes. My experience with my classes is probably not the same for other majors, since mine is intense on reading. We have few class time in order to be encouraged to actually do the readings. Other students do not have their semester divided into two and can take four classes at a time, similar to Boston. It simply depends on which classes you plan on taking and how much credits they are worth.

I believe that the main difference between classes at Northeastern and at HiOA are the way they are organized. Classes are usually small (mine has 9 students in total) and the final grade consists solely on one cumulative exam at the end of the two-month period. Your grade is not a sum of homework, written assignments, and midterms. This is why students are usually given one or two weeks without class or homework to focus on studying. Still, it is a lot of pressure which can be too stressful at times. It means that you have to pay attention in class and be an efficient note-taker. Classes themselves are similar to those at Northeastern. They are usually PowerPoint lectures with a portion of the class dedicated to critical discussion of the readings for that week. For my first class of the semester, I did not need to buy any textbook. All readings were made available to Fronter (the Norwegian version of Blackboard). I hope this same system is applied for my second class of the semester, as well.