Skip to content


On student workload, cognitive load, number of hours per credit hour and the future of online teaching

I have written A LOT about various ways in which we can be kinder and gentler to our students, but I keep seeing op-eds and write ups on Those Higher Education outlets, and I am still thinking that there are things that need to be said. What I am writing about reflects MY experience and may not translate into others’ views.

The Twitter thread that I wrote speaks to the global perception that having a lot of reading material was acceptable in The Before Times and that somehow More Readings + A Lot of Time Devoted to Studying = Better Learning Outcomes. This is not the exact statement circulating, but it’s a common perception and one that I hope the global COVID19 pandemic puts to rest, because I don’t think it is actually true.

The issue of “credit hours” and “contact hours” and “study hours per hour of contact/in classroom time” really bugs me, as you can tell.

On 1) There’s an assumption that students should spend 1-3 hours per credit hour per course. A 3 hour/week class would require 3-9 hours worth of studying. If a student takes 4, 3-credit courses you are talking about 4x[3,9] hours worth of studying ON TOP of IN-CLASS hours.

If my math doesn’t fail me, that means that a student during regular times would need anything between 12 and 36 hours of their time to STUDY (wait until I add the 12 hours of in-class time). So that’s anywhere between 24 and 48 hours of school-related work.

That’s… INSANE.

Yesterday I only had 2 online meetings that required my brain to be functional and I could not wake up at 4am as I normally do – I have 4 meetings scheduled for today and that means I’m going to end up absolutely destroyed by tonight (even with a nap).

We need to reconsider how we approach distance teaching and learning under pandemic conditions.

My cognitive ability to THINK, let alone PRODUCE anything is vastly reduced by *gestures broadly* everything happening around me. I am a senior professor with a permanent job, a very decent salary, who is healthy and whose care responsibilities are significantly low. *I* struggle.

I don’t have much data (only 4 courses, plus one in the summer), but in my evaluations, students clearly marked that they appreciated and value empathy. I DO know for a fact that doing all this online work is taking a toll on my students. My thesis students tell me this, too.

And on the other side of the equation, these conditions take a toll on everyone else in higher education – faculty, families of students AND faculty, staff, etc.

Personally, I think we need to lower expectations, workload AND levels of stress, and just Chill The Fuck Out.

You can share this blog post on the following social networks by clicking on their icon.

Posted in academia.

Tagged with , .


One Response

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Roxana Durantes says

    Amen!



Some HTML is OK

or, reply to this post via trackback.



shares