Student Workload

Online Faculty Development Course

How Much Work for Students?

Alongside everything discussed in the previous pages, you are probably have a more basic question: how much should I expect students to do in my online or hybrid course?

When switching from F2F teaching, this is a natural question. But you probably ask this when crafting F2F courses, or did in the past. In fact, many professors' sense of student responsibilities is from experience as a student, and advice from colleagues. But there are guidelines that were developed over a century ago, and have been honed by government and accreditors since. Let's take a look at what these institutions say:

New York State

The New York State Education Department declares that

Regardless of the delivery method or the particular learning activities employed, the amount of learning time in any college course should meet the requirements of Commissioner's Regulation Section 50.1 (o), a total of 45 hours for one semester credit (in conventional classroom education this breaks down into 15 hours of instruction plus 30 hours of student work/study out of class.)

For a three-credit F2F undergraduate or graduate course, that means roughly 45 hours of classroom instruction, and 90 hours outside of class. Or, for an online course, 135 hours' work, total, or perhaps nine hours a week.

On their website, NYSED elaborates on this guideline a bit:

Distance Education Program Policies

NYSED admits that determining students' level of effort, or time spent, can be "difficult for anyone other than the course developer or instructor to determine accurately." So rely on your best judgment, and listen to what your students have to say, either in course evaluations, or even by soliciting their honest feedback within the course.

But NYSED's short discussion of student effort is generally helpful, and they offer a helpful tip: where you can, be explicit to students about the amount of time they might reasonably expect to spend on different activities in the course. The isn't always easy to do, since different students have varied strengths and weaknesses. But anytime you can provide a rough estimate, at least, it can be helpful.

Federal Requirements

At Canisius, we offer courses measured by credit hours that are described by the above NYSED guidelines, and also Federal Department of Education (for Title IV funding) rules. These are endorsed by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), our accreditor. According to MSCHE (2022, p. 2), here is what the U.S. Department of Education has to say about the credit hour:

Credit hour. An amount of student work defined by an institution, as approved by the institution’s accrediting agency or State approval agency, that is consistent with commonly accepted practice in postsecondary education and that (1) reasonably approximates not less than (i) One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out-of-class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different period of time; or (ii) At least an equivalent amount of work as required in (1) of this definition for other academic activities as established by the institution, including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours; and (2) permits an institution, in determining the amount of work associated with a credit hour, to take into account a variety of delivery methods, measurements of student work, academic calendars, disciplines, and degree levels. (federal definition in 34 CFR § 600.2).

The Department of Education also clarifies:

CH-Q3: Does the definition of a credit hour mean that all 3-credit courses will have to meet for 3 hours per week or the equivalent of 37.5 clock hours for a semester hour?

CH-A3: No. The credit-hour definition does not dictate particular amounts of classroom time versus out-of-class student work. Further note that the definition provides that a credit hour may be for an equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time. There is no requirement that a 3-semester hour course meet 3 hours per week during a semester or a 3-quarter-hour course meet 3 hours per week during a quarter. The requirement is that the institution determine that there is an amount of student work for a credit hour that reasonably approximates not less than one hour of class and two hours of out-of-class student work per week over a semester for a semester hour or a quarter for a quarter hour. For example, an institution with a semester-based calendar has a graduate seminar for which it awards 3 semester hours. The class meets only one hour per week over a 15-week semester with the students expected to perform a substantial amount of outside research that is the equivalent of 8 or more hours of student work each week of the semester. For purposes of the Federal definition, the institution would be able to award up to 3 semester hours for the course. With regard to the need to have the equivalent of 37.5 hours, the 37.5-hour requirement relates to undergraduate programs subject to the clock-to-credit-hour conversion requirements in §668.8(k) and (l). These requirements are not relevant to degree programs of at least two academic years and graduate programs, and would not apply to certain nondegree undergraduate programs. Further, similar to the definition of a credit hour in §600.2, §668.8(l)(2) provides institutions with the flexibility to take into account out-of-class student work in determining the credit hours that may be used for Federal purposes. [Guidance issued 3/18/2011]

Obviously, an online asynchronous course almost entirely falls under "other academic work leading to the award of credit hours!" As we said previously, U.S. Department of Education requires the elements of Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI) within online courses. But after that, Uncle Sam effectively leads the overall workload up to instructors. If interested in learning more, see the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR).

Students as Insiders

More broadly, be as transparent as possible about the purpose of students' work. Why are they doing what they are doing in your course? With assignment instructions, at the start of synchronous activities, or even in a comprehensive paragraph at the beginning of your weekly module, state briefly what course content, activities, or assignments are meant to accomplish, as far as learning objectives. This heads off student suspicions that assignments and activities are basically busy-work. Even if a student doesn't agree that something is helpful for their learning, they can see that the course follows a plan. (So they might better be able to constructively discuss their view of it in course evaluations.)

"Helping your students understand what they are to do and why it's valuable is especially important in online classes," Flower Darby points out, "because you don't have the opportunity to detect confusion and answer assignment-related questions in real time the way you would in the physical classroom."

We will revisit this in greater depth, in Lesson 4.

Workload Consistency

Once we have figured out how much work a student should be expected to do, we also need to be consistent with it. This makes it easier not only for us to plan each week but also for students to plan out their own schedules. For example, two activities and a quiz per week. This can fluctuate a little bit, particularly during mid-terms and finals (ex., we might do one activity and the mid-term that week or one activity and provide study worksheets/mock quizzes in the weeks prior to the final), but the point is to be consistent.

Report abuse