Each semester the Honors Program at Charleston Southern University will offer several courses open only to Honors Program students. Specifically designed for the high-ability, motivated students that comprise the program, Honors Courses are one of the unique ways Honors students benefit from their Honors Program experience while at Charleston Southern University. Although Honors Program courses are offered in diverse academic disciplines, they generally share certain fundamental characteristics that distinguish them from non-honors courses.
An Honors Course does not exist simply to cover a greater amount of material; an Honors Course will handle the subject matter differently than a similar non-Honors course. While Honors Courses may require some greater time commitment of the students than similar non-honors courses, the emphasis should be on increasing the depth and thoroughness of understanding rather than the amount of material covered. Honors students do not need to do more work than non-honors students; they need to do work that is more appropriate for high-ability, motivated students. The focus of an Honors Course should be on the student attaining a more sophisticated depth and/or breadth of coverage than in a non-Honors course. To this end, where appropriate, Honors courses should use primary-source documents (e.g., journal articles, original texts), and require students to design and conduct research models appropriate for the discipline.
Honors Courses should be designed to engage students actively in the learning process. Generally, honors courses should require students to participate in discussion, debate, simulations, or case studies where the student is expected to actively engage with the course material. They should ask students to develop, discuss, and defend opinions, attitudes, or values related to the course content; to pose questions and develop oral and written responses appropriate to the discipline; and/or to develop leadership skills through presentations, service-learning internships, or professional development activities.
Honors Courses should encourage students to interact with faculty and with one another, both inside and outside class, as part of the learning process. For this reason, they should be designed for fewer students than other classes and be taught by regular faculty members.
Although the grading methods in an Honors Course may be different to reflect the complexity and sophistication of the material, the grading standards at the end of the course, however, should not be designed to force the Honors students to compete among themselves for a limited number of “A” or “B” grades. Instead, their grades should be assigned on the basis of the quality of their work compared to the quality of the work generally expected in such a course (in both regular and honors sections). In other words, the honors student should be graded in the context of all of the students enrolled in similar courses at the same level, not in the context of an honors section in isolation. Students who meet the challenge of an Honors Course should have this achievement reflected in their grades, but there should be no hesitation to award low grades to students in an Honors Course who do not meet course expectations.
* Please note that bold script indicates mandatory guidelines.
