Adding and Dropping Courses: Composition Program Policies

Adding Courses: The university guarantees students the right to add new classes--when space is available--through the end of the official add period. This may mean that new students arrive in your classroom early in the third week of the semester. Students should not be penalized for adding a course late: instructors may need to adjust the scale of class-participation grading, for instance, or allow make up assignments, or extend assignment deadlines.

The Composition Program recommends that instructors work with late-add students to set up a reasonable set of deadlines for work that is past due or very nearly due, to ensure that each student is "caught up" with major assignments within two weeks' of his or her enrollment.

In a writing course, having unlimited extensions on deadlines can significantly harm a student's progress in learning. Setting clear deadlines may mean that a late-add student is working on more than one assignment at a time, or that s/he must complete a lengthy assignment, such as an essay, more quickly than other students did. However, such adjustments may be necessary to help the student keep up with and benefit from the work of the course.

"Force Adds" (Registration overrides) : All instructors have the option to use Patriot Web to "force add" students to a class they are teaching that is officially full. Using a student's name or ID number, instructors may issue registration override permission to that student for a closed course. The student himself or herself must then take the opportunity to enroll in the class. It is a good idea to email the student to remind him or her to register.

It is true at Mason, as at other schools, that enrollment in an average composition course will decline by one or two students during the first weeks of a semester. Many instructors use that information to guide them in deciding whether to grant a registration override when a class appears to be full. Long-time teachers in the department also often argue that issuing an override to an eager student early in the add-drop process can be beneficial: if another registered student drops, the override-student (who may have already been dutifully attending class) is automatically moved into the "open" spot instead of the open spot being given to a brand new student.

However, there is never any guarantee that one or more students will drop your class in any given semester, or that students who drop will do so early in a term.

Moreover, the relatively low caps on enrollment in composition courses at Mason took years of campaigning to achieve, lowered often a single student at a time by arguing that even one student per class, across an instructor's whole load and across the whole program, made a difference in the quality of instruction.

The small class sizes benefit both instructors and their students, by helping writing instruction be more personal and involve more participation and feedback. Instructors who regularly enroll students over the officially designated cap may be disadvantaging themselves and their students.

Therefore, the Composition Program strongly recommends that instructors do not overenroll their writing courses.

Dropping Courses: Students are allowed to withdraw from a course during the two weeks of add-drop, with varying financial penalties but with no record going on their transcript.

Students are allowed to withdraw from an entire semester's worth of courses after add-drop, but only with approval by the student's academic dean and only for non-academic reasons that prevent course completion. A "W" appears on the student's transcript.

Starting in Fall 2005, undergraduates are granted three "elective withdrawals" for their career at Mason: these are opportunities to withdraw from a class, with no record on the official academic roster and no GPA penalty, if they drop at any point after add-drop and before the ninth week of a regular semester.

Using an elective withdrawal may be a significant benefit for students in English 302, who are often aware, or can be made aware, by the ninth week of the semester, that they may not be doing well enough to earn a "C" by the end of the semester. Dropping English 302 at such a "point of no return" can have two benefits: it can eliminate the effect of a low 302 grade on a student's semester-GPA, and it can free the student up from struggling with a difficult writing course, allowing him or her to put his/her energies into courses for which s/he is more likely to earn graduation credit.

Instructors are encouraged to contact students who may be at serious risk of not earning a "C" in English 302 and inform them of this opportunity. Instructors should do this tactfully, of course, neither insisting that a struggling student must drop nor implying that a truly borderline student has no option for bringing his/her grade up if indeed improvement is still possible. Students should also be cautioned to check on any requirements that they may have for keeping a full load of courses to fulfill scholarship or financial-aid rules.

This policy does not provide much of an advantage for students enrolled in English 101. Students who do not earn a grade of "C" or higher in English 101 are already granted a grade of "NC," which has no effect on the student's GPA, and which is replaced as soon as the student sucessfully completes English 101. A student who has reached a "point of no return" in English 101 may be counseled, tactfully, about the advantages of redirecting his or her energies to courses in which s/he is likely to be more successful. However, in most cases, students will be better served by "saving up" their elective withdrawals for courses other than English 101.

The Composition Program recommends that instructors consider counseling students in English 302who are struggling to achieve a C about elective withdrawals, but does not recommend that English 101 students formally withdraw from the course.