Calculating student workload
Finding the right balance between engaging learning activities and considering student workload is a key component for student success.
Credit hours
In accordance with accreditation standards, one academic credit represents “a minimum of 45 hours of academic activity, including lectures, tutorials, laboratories, studio or practice periods, examinations, and personal work.” Therefore, a 3-credit course represents a minimum of 135 hours of course-related academic activities.
Because traditional in-class time is transformed in online and hybrid teaching, your students’ workload or “time-on-task" should be taken into consideration in the design of your course unit and learning activities.
The following guidelines are intended to help you plan your online or hybrid courses with a balanced workload.
Communicate course expectations
Post your course outline on Moodle as early as possible and include a list of assignments, readings, deliverables, due dates, and expected workload to help students improve their self-management strategies. Some instructors conduct an anonymous survey using Moodle Survey or Microsoft Forms at the beginning of the course to get student feedback on course workload and expectations.
Estimate student workload
For a 3-credit course, the expected workload for your course is a minimum of 11 hours per week in a 12-week term (this should be adjusted for courses that follow alternative schedules). This includes any lectures whether synchronous or asynchronous.
This workload estimator from Wake Forest University will help calculate the amount of time the average student will take to work through and complete all of the assignments, exams, and other learning activities in your course. This includes in-person or virtual lectures, seminars, study, experiential learning activities, placements, labs, studios, simulations, preparation for projects, and examinations. If you determine that the student workload exceeds 11 hours per week, a good approach is to prioritize course content that aligns directly with your course and unit learning outcomes.
Clarify workload expectations – sometimes students will spend more or less time than you intend. Throughout the semester, you can ask students how much time they are spending on course tasks per week. This will give you an idea of the workload and indicate if you need to adjust for the remainder of the course.
Create a clear and consistent structure
Create a user-friendly system to organize the content, tasks, and activities in your course Moodle page. This system should be consistent over the weeks, or units of your course. For example, each week, students should be clear about what they must do, what to review, what to watch, what to post or submit, and whether they should do this before or after any synchronous sessions.
One suggestion is to plan for weekly reminder announcements on Moodle for students, summarizing what was covered previously, what they should be working on and what is coming up.
Prioritize assessment activities
If you are having students complete an assignment in a given week, consider moving all other learning activities to a different week, to help students manage their time and workload across their courses.
Consider adding some element of choice or flexibility in your assessment plans. For example, if students complete weekly reading responses, you could count the best 10 out of 12. Where possible, set flexible due dates for assignments such as a 48-hour window for deadlines.
Sample task and time breakdown for one week
| Task | Time |
|---|---|
| Reviewing recorded lectures and/or assigned readings | 2.5 hours |
| Posting a short “knowledge check” self-assessment statement to the drop box | 0.5 hours |
| Reading assignments | 2 hours |
| Synchronous class session (short lecture and Q & A, either synchronously online (e.g., on Zoom) or in-person) | 1 hour |
| Posting to discussions (original post, responses to three classmates’ posts, responses to responses) | 1 hour |
| Small group project meetings (web conference or asynchronous discussion) | 1 hour |
| Work on final research paper and presentation | 3 hours |
| Total | 11 hours |
Adapted from: Example tasks and completion times for one week of a 16-week, 3-credit online course (Turner, 2005)
References
Turner, T. (2005). Student workload in the online course: Balancing on a rule-of-thumb. Educator’s Voice, 6(3).
