Time Considerations
Well-designed courses select resources and develop activities within an agreed-upon time frame. Success in this area considerably enhances participant motivation, and the opposite is also true.
Generally, participants should dedicate 5 to 6 hours per week to a Wilmette Institute course, and courses generally last 8 weeks. This time calculation includes everything: reading, watching videos, participating in discussion forums, writing an essay, uploading the essay, video conferences, and any assigned field work. Some courses may have lighter or heavier work loads, which is fine as long as it is justified, is agreed upon with WI, and is clearly stated in promotional materials. Another option is to decrease or increase the length of the course, which can be discussed with the director.
Course developers must calculate approximate times for each resource and each activity. There may be considerable variation among participants in the time it takes them to carry out the activities in a unit, so course developers should try to calculate an average time participants may take. These times do not need to be published for participants, but they should be stated in the design template, part 2. Some course developers have a tendency to assign all readings and videos that they consider important, but this generally does not work out well. Here is some orientation:
The overarching concept that guides time calculation is to emphasize quality over quantity, as we outlined on the Methodology page.
It is better to assign too few resources and activities than too many. If the resources and activities are high quality and thought provoking, participants will spend more time reflecting on and discussing what they are learning. Reflection and rich discussions provoke more learning than reading a lot of text and not having much time to reflect or discuss it. This pedagogical aspect to designing a course is also further explored on the Methodology page.
Further to the previous point, if participants feel overwhelmed by the quantity of readings and activities, they will often skip through the readings superficially, or leave large portions unread. If participants lose motivation to carry out the readings or activities, your efforts at selecting resources and designing a powerful course come to naught.
Prioritize readings and other resources. Choose the ones that are necessary for the participant to fulfill the learning outcomes, and leave it at that. If the necessary resources take more time than participants have in a unit, then extend the unit over two weeks.
Remember, the goal is for participants to fulfill the objectives. The goal is not to show how much the instructor knows, or for the participant to know every detail about a subject, or provide the participant with a complete list of resources for every topic.
Some course developers prefer to assign part of a book chapter, article, or movie because the rest of the resource is less relevant to the objectives. In this case, WI will assist the developer to prepare a document with only the selected text to avoid publishing the entire chapter, for example.
Some course developers like to assign certain resources and then offer many more resources as optional. Offering optional readings is fine but they should also be limited to avoid overwhelming participants. If some participants express more interest in a specific topic, instructors should feel free to provide additional resources.
Gauge how time management is working among participants over the first few units and make adjustments as the course progresses.
Always indicate the number of pages for each reading and duration for each video.
Use the following to gauge how much course material is appropriate:
The average adult reading rate is 250 words per minute with 70% comprehension (Smith, Brenda D. “Breaking Through: College Reading” 7th Ed. Longman, 2004).
Reading for learning (100-200 wpm); reading for comprehension (200-400 wpm); and skimming (400-700 wpm).
With an average of 400 words per page, at 200 words per minute a student should read around 30 pages per hour (200 words per minute x 60 = 12,000 words per hour divided by 400 = 30 pages per hour). Therefore, we are using 25-30 pages per hour.
Audiobooks are recommended to be 150-160 words per minute or 22 pages per hour.
Reading on a monitor: 180-200 wpm or 27 pages per hour.
Slide presentations are closer to 100 wpm or 15 pages per hour.
Revised: 04/01/2022