Does Investing in Interim-Terms Pay Dividends?

Abstract

Interim-term course offerings are becoming more common as universities attempt to respond to student demand for courses outside the traditional semester time frames and to more fully utilize their resources (both faculty and facilities). One of the concerns with these courses is that the compressed time frame may compromise student learning, in terms of both learning within the course and knowledge retention. This paper considers these issues by comparing the performance of finance majors enrolled in the principles course in an interim session with that of students taking this course in a traditional term. For students in our study, we find that there is no statistical difference in the two groups’ performance within the principles class itself or in the subsequent courses required of all finance majors.