I have asked multiple people in various areas of study how their class experience on the Air Force Base went versus the same class on the UND campus. How can they compare the two accurately?

Many of the students had first failed the class at UND. They then took it at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, passed with flying colors, and actually enjoyed the class.  After my experiences at UND with math, physics, and chemistry classes, I am definitely hopping aboard the Base plane.

Lake Region State College is the school hosting classes at the Grand Forks Air Force Base. Lake Region is a small college and located in Devil’s Lake, N.D.  Part of its motto is, “we enhance lives and community vitality through quality education.” There must be something this school does better when it seemingly has a higher passing percentage and student satisfaction level at its satellite and online locations. An extremely appealing aspect of the Base classes is that they are taught in half semester, extra-long class sessions. You can knock out both physics classes in one semester, not the two it would require at UND.

Classes at the base have been a silent (but growing louder) whisper throughout the student body for those majoring in a science related subject such as biology, physics, chemistry or geology.  I knew nothing about this option until my second semester at UND when an upperclassman overheard a friend and I complaining about a chemistry class we were in and shared his experiences with us.

This student claimed he was not the best at chemistry and needed a class that catered more to his learning style (and that of many other students).  He had taken chemistry at UND twice with no success. His major required Chemistry II, so he was dreading the long road of pass or fail limbo, which is how the UND chemistry teachers approach their curriculum. He then figured out how to take the classes on the Air Force base instead, where he went on to pass both Chemistry I and II with grades of high Bs, which would probably make any college student happy after the UND experiences (and wasted tuition money).

Some students are successful within the chemistry, math, and physics classes at UND but, unfortunately, many are not – each student learns differently. After my experiences at UND with the subjects, I would classify them as passive learning classes.  Passive learning is where instructors expect students to attend class regularly, read the textbook per instructor request, watch a lecture, and do assigned homework. Passive learning environments do not cultivate a student’s interest or engage them to become excited in the class. Some people learn best with this traditional approach to learning used by universities, but many students do not.

If anyone has taken a class in the “Scale-Up Room” in O’Kelly, I am assuming you preferred it. I have had several classes in this room, which promotes the style of active learning.  Active learning places a student in an environment that requires them to exercise their brain and interact with other classmates by way of group projects, interactive discussions and lectures, or worksheets.  Yes, you still need to read the textbook, but you then apply it to work in the class – not just store the information away in hopes of being able to recall it for a later test.

Taking classes at the Air Force Base is not all sunshine and rainbows.  If you drop a class halfway through the semester at UND, and take the half semester one up on the base, your financial aid (if you have any) no longer applies and you will need to pay for it out of pocket, which can be a hefty sum. During the second part of Fall semester, I am attending a Chemistry II class there for eight weeks, and the class has amounted to a whopping $905. I passed my chemistry lab with flying colors, yet I will have to take it again because at the Air Force Base, the chemistry lab and class are wrapped into one by Lake Region State College. This is a great inconvenience, but when I need to graduate, and this is one of the only classes standing in my way, I am going to go out of my way to get it done. Also, expect a drain in your bank account as the base is a 15-mile drive each way. Hopefully you do not get stuck out there in a snowstorm, but chances are you can find one (or many) other UND students to carpool with to class.

Ultimately, the responsibility of learning is solely that of the student’s.  We are here to learn, we pay mass amounts of money to do so.  Some of us struggle in some subjects and some teachers do what they can to help, but reorganization in class learning structure would be valued by many students in the math, chemistry, and physics departments. In the meantime, if you are a student struggling in any of these courses, check out the classes on the Air Force base.

Maggie Upton is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. She can be reached at [email protected].