How Much Time Will This Take?

A fairly constant comment I get on my teaching evaluations is something to the effect of “There’s too much work.” While students rarely suggest the work itself is too difficult, the suggestion there is too much of it really points toward an unwillingness to spend the time required to do well in this course.

So, how much time is reasonable to demand from students?

NECESSARY PREPARATION TIME - 86 hours/semester

The average preparation time suggested by most studies of student performance is about two to three hours of prep time for every hour of class time. Note, that is an average. Most sites devoted to college level study suggest that prep time depends upon the difficulty of the course with courses which students find most difficult requiring more time than those which come naturally to them. But, the minimum any suggest is two hours. Given student tendencies to minimize study time, we will use the two hours prep time/1 hour class time estimate for this calculation.

So, for this class which meets three hours each week for a total of 43 class meetings (about 15 weeks with holidays) in a fall or spring semester, students probably need to plan to spend six hours of prep time in addition to the three hours class times or about nine hours per week devoted strictly to this course. As the Cliffs Notes site (hardly a source known for overuse of student time) suggests, the average college student taking an average 15 credit hour load should plan to spend about 30 to 45 hours outside class just preparing for their classes. Add that to the class hours and we’re talking 45-60 hours per week just devoted to college courses.

Given that there are 43 class meetings per semester, that means that each student at a minimum should plan to devote 86 prep hours to this course during the semester.

Here are some sources that may give you some insights into prep time:

http://www.users.drew.edu/sjamieso/Resources/Reading-for-college.ppt.

http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/learn/suggest.html

http://www.execuread.com/index.cfm/p/pages.facts.htm

READING TIME – 28 hours for texts

Average reading times for college students are estimated to be about 250 words per minute for non-technical materials. Humanities texts fall into that category. Many college students read much faster than that. Estimates of good reading speeds actually begin at 500 words per minute but for purposes of this calculation, we’ll use the low end – 250 wpm which translates to about two minutes per page. It may be a bit faster to read Humanities texts which tend to feature a lot of pictures and illustrations. But we’ll go with 2 minutes per page.

Now, how much reading? Sayre’s text averages about 33 pages per chapter. Each course (HUM 2210 and HUM 2230) requires 24 chapters, 8 chapters per third of the course material tested on exams. At 2 minutes per page, 33 pages per chapter, that translates to about 26 hours of reading the text per semester. Add another two hours maximum for related readings linked to the schedule and the total is 28 hours reading per semester.

Here are some sources that may give you some insights into reading speed:

http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/htimesch.html

http://AcademicTips.org

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/Section/How-much-outside-class-study-time-is-recommended-for-every-hour-of-class-time-for-college-freshmen-.id-305397,articleId-7601.html

CONTENT QUIZZES – 10 hours

The content quizzes are designed to insure that students read and comprehend the materials in the text and readings. There are about 30 quizzes for both HUM 2210 and HUM 2230. Each quiz gives the student two attempts of 10 minutes each. That means 600 total minutes per semester if the student takes all 30 quizzes (and only 25 are required). That means 10 hours per semester is taken up by content quizzes.

GROUP PRESENTATIONS – 11 hours

Students are required to complete three group presentations each semester. This involves discussing up front who will do what by what date and how. It also includes researching text and images for presentations and putting them together. If we assume that prep time takes an hour and a half per presentation and that production time and upload time takes another half hour, that’s two hours per presentation or six hours total when your group presents. When your group does not present, students are still required to evaluate those groups. Those Audience Evaluations and the Self-Group Evaluations required when groups present generally take about an hour each presentation. Thus, another five hours is required for evaluation. So, in total, you will spend about 11 hours per semester for group presentations and evaluations.

GORDON RULE PAPERS – 9 hours

Florida college students are required to write four Gordon Rule Papers per Gordon Rule course to meet the state requirements for writing. In this course, you are required to write three Gordon Rule Papers on assigned subjects. The student may write a fourth paper for extra credit. The final required Gordon Rule Paper is a Summary Reflection Paper at the end of the term.

Assigned GRPs require reading assigned texts and taking a prep quiz to insure reading comprehension. For three papers, those texts will require about two and a half hours to read using the reading rate noted above. The three 10 minute quizzes will require another half hour. So preparation for writing the GRPs will require three hours total.

Writing the Gordon Rule papers themselves should take no more than an average of one hour and a half per paper including upload time. That includes the Summary Reflection Paper which should take no more than an hour and a half including preparation as well. So, writing and uploading will require another six hours. That means that another nine hours will be claimed by the Gordon Rule Papers requirement.

EXAM PREP - 18 hours

Over the years my students have given me various estimates of time required to prepare for the three exams covering 1/3 of the course material each. My estimate based on their reports is that six hours per exam is probably sufficient for the average student to make an A. If we multiply six hours by three exams (assuming the student has to take the regular Exam III), that’s 18 hours total.

Now if we add this all up:

Reading Time	28 hours
Content Quizzes	10 hours
Group Presentations	11 hours
Gordon Rule Papers	9 hours
Exam Prep	18 hours
TOTAL	75 hours

NOW, assuming that the average student should spend the 86 hours per semester outside class preparing for the 43 hours spent in class, that means the average student has an additional 11 hours to work with above and beyond the average demands of this class on the average student documented above. That leaves time to complete extra credit work and still remain within the average prep time required of the average student.

What About Online Classes and Summer Classes?

Online Classes - This prep time applies to both in-class as well as online courses. In online courses, time required to post comments, read and comment on other students’ postings is part of the hour class time as is the time required to deal with the technological aspects of WebCourses. Students in online courses simply spend the time otherwise spent in class online.

For summer classes, the same prep time applies. The trick is that summer classes take place in six weeks rather than 15. Whereas the average student spend three hours in class per week during fall and semester terms, in summer that raises to seven and a half hours per week. That means that prep time in summer sessions (A and B) is 15 hours per week. When combined with class time means 22.5 hours per week should be devoted to that one single class.

Too Much Work?

Of course, given the calculations above, while students complain that they have had to complete too much work and thus spend too much time on these courses, the reality is that few students actually ever come close to the time required for even the average student in the average class to succeed. It’s doubtful this accounting of time demanded by this course will stop such complaining. But it does reveal a few things:

1. That this course of average difficulty is capable of being completed comfortably when students of average reading skills are willing to spend the average amount of time in preparation for it, and

2. That when students say courses require too much (meaning their time) it is less a statement about time requirements of the course than about the willingness of the average student to actually spend the average amount of time required for the class.

3. This may point toward a common malady among college students and instructors alike – the inability to manage time properly. Perhaps we can all learn something from this exercise in self-evaluation.