What is an "RRR" day?

UC Berkeley official website: here

"RRR" stands for "Reading/Review/Recitation," and, as best as I understand it, it is the University's attempt to create more study time for students ahead of final exams.

What follows are my preliminary comments (written Aug 21, 2009) based on a email received Aug 20 from the Vice Provost of Academic Planning. Whether this change will actually be implemented this semester, on such extremely short notice, is not clear to me. My judgment is that it will and so, rather than make changes to the schedule during the first busy weeks of the term, I am making my changes now to accommodate as best I can on short notice a policy I am gambling will in fact be in place and followed by many faculty on campus.

The email states: "During the RRR Period, student-faculty contact can be maintained through office hours, chat and e-mail, review sessions, and the flexible scheduling of oral or poster presentations of semester projects. Whether or not faculty members wish to hold review sessions or presentations, they are expected to be available to students for consultation during the period, either during office hours or in other forums. Though faculty members are expected to be available to students, they may not require students to attend any review sessions or a particular presentation time as part of their final grade. Additional guidelines on acceptable uses of the RRR Period will follow in the near future, but we wanted to alert you now regarding the change.

My implementation:

I cannot remake my very complicated schedules for my three up-coming classes at this late a time to open up the class sessions that occur on Dec 7, 8 & 9. The puzzle is just too compact; there is no elasticity to shorten anything.

By good fortune, my TTh classes have only Dec 8 scheduled, and this was to be an open discussion day anyway. EA105, a MWF class, has two days (7 & 9) affected and this policy has more on an impact on it.

What I can and will do is:

• carry out student evaluations before this time period,
• make these sessions optional attendance, and
• make sure that none of the material presented during this time will be tested.

These changes are subject to modification at any time and without notice, though I will make reasonable effort to communicate any changes to the above on the course announcements page and in class.