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| Oceanography class in the Four Seasons |
We offer about 70 academic courses on the ship. Most students take four (12 credit hours). Everybody takes Global Studies (even LLLs, staculty, and ship kids). Then students will choose three more that fit or complement their majors. Every class is chosen from the regular CSU Catalog and offers college credit through CSU.
We can’t know exactly which classes will be offered on a given voyage until the faculty are hired. The first academic hire on each voyage is an Academic Dean who then works ridiculously hard for many months with ISE staff to hire everybody else.
Most classes except Global Studies have about 30 students. They meet all over the ship in lounges that are repurposed as classrooms. LLLs can sit in on as many classes as they like. You don’t have to do homework or take exams or receive college credit. Nevertheless, you’ll get much more out of the course if you at least do the readings and maybe some of the homework.
Global Studies meets every morning at sea, but all other classes meet on either A days or B days. Alternating A and B days are our only “days of the week.” We don’t do weekends. Academic materials are shared through Moodle, which is a “learning management system” like Blackboard or Canvas. You will probably want a laptop to use Moodle. The course syllabus,
readings, assignments, videos, etc will all be distributed and collected online through Moodle. Moodle runs on the shipboard intranet and does not use up your limited internet allowance.
Every course includes a Field Class that’s worth exactly 20% of the semester grade. For example, in oceanography you might spend a day snorkeling on a coral reef to learn about marine ecology. Or in theater class you might attend a performance in Nairobi and learn about set making. In geography you might visit a baboon sanctuary in Borneo. A psychology class might visit a mental health clinic in Cape Town.
It's a bit confusing, but Field Classes are completely different from SAS Field Programs. The former are a required component of a credit-bearing college course. The latter are often educational but not connected to any class and they’re open to anybody. The cost of Field Classes is included in tuition. The cost of Field Programs is extra and billed to your ship account. Field Programs are organized by the Field Office (located next to the reception desk on Deck 5). Field Classes are organized by the professor of each course.
Only students registered in a course may attend the Field Class required by that course. LLLs sitting in multiple classes may choose to attend only one Field Class. Even if you sit in on three classes plus Global Studies, you can only pick one Field Class to attend. Field classes meet when we are sojourning in a country, which means attending a Field Class requires that you forgo other travel or Field Programs on that day.
Taking classes is one of the most rewarding parts of Semester at Sea. You’re literally going back to college for a whole semester. You will learn a lot and also get to know students much better through classes than you would just by bumping into them at dinner.