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College Course Structure

  • Courses in the fall and spring are held in time blocks called semesters. A semester is a 16 week block of time, start to finish.  In the summer, courses are held during the summer session.  A summer session course may last eight weeks or twelve weeks.
  • Most college courses are held on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or Tuesday and Thursday. A few courses are held five days a week, some four days a week and labs meet once a week.
  • Monday, Wednesday and Friday courses meet for 50 minutes each day. This is also true of courses that meet four or five days a week.
  • Tuesday, Thursday courses meet for an hour and fifteen minutes each day.
  • Labs may meet for an hour, two hours, or three hours, depending on the type of lab.
  • Many applied technology courses meet for several hours at a time.
  • Snow College has the smallest course sizes of all state colleges and universities in the state of Utah! Most of our courses have 25 to 30 students.  Courses that meet in lecture halls usually have more students.  Our convocation course has just over 200 students and is held in a large concert hall to accommodate music, dance and other cultural performances.
  • Course assignments vary in each class. Almost all courses contain the following assignments:
    • Regular testing by essay and/or multiple choice exams;
    • Formal writing assignments in the form of essays, lab write-ups, research papers, reflection papers or case studies;
    • Quizzes on readings;
    • Most courses require students to participate in class by engaging in class discussions or by answering questions and asking questions;
    • In some classes you may have classroom presentations and group presentations assigned;
    • Some courses may require service learning requirements. Click Here to learn more about service learning.
  • You should expect to spend two to three hours out of class studying for each one hour in class. Some weeks the work will be light.  When you have projects or papers to write, you will spend considerably more time doing homework.  Develop good study habits from the beginning and you will reap the benefits throughout your college career.