This post originally appeared on the University of Saskatchewan DEU | ONLINE TEACHING & EDTECH IDEAS blog at https://sites.usask.ca/edtech/2020/06/25/how-much-should-i-assign-estimating-workload-in-asynchronous-classes/
Over nearly ten years of designing and developing online classes at different Higher Education Institutions in Canada, one question I have found consistently in all contexts is, “how much content should I include in my online class?” Now that we are looking at remote teaching in the fall, that question has become a lot more frequent, so let’s take a deeper look at the question and hopefully provide some useful resources.
First, the question about “how much content” tends to lead to the broader question of, “how much time and effort are students expected to put into a single class?” When we teach face-to-face, in flipped classrooms, blended classrooms, or even in synchronous online classes (those with webinar like sessions), we have a proxy for how much time students spend on our classes based on the assigned class time. We expect that students will come to class (e.g. three 1-hour lectures per week) as well as complete readings, assignments, or other activities out-side of class time.
What does this mean for asynchronous classes? Every class will be a bit different, based on the country, province, institution, Faculty/College/School, and department norms. It will also depend on the level of the class, expectations for 100-level classes are different than 400-level classes and graduate level classes. There is no hard-rule about number of expected hours, but this post will hopefully provide you with some tools to look critically at your course and manage expectations for your students as well as for your own workload teaching remotely.
Overall, we can assume that for a course that was comprised of three 1-hour lectures per week can be the baseline to start with. At the top end of our estimate we might consider a 2:1 ratio of “out of class time” to “in class time”, so about 9 hours per week. Note that students may be taking a number of classes, so if every week was at the top end of this range and a student was taking five classes they reach 45 hours per week very quickly. Many of our students are also working, have classes that also have lab components or tutorials, co-curricular activities and other commitments which should be in the back of our mind while we are planning out a course. Most of the time your course will be more work in one week, and less work another, depending on the topics you are discussing and assignments you have in place. The main takeaway here is that we will work within a range. It’s worth mentioning here that DEU has found that students report spending on average about 6 hours of on task time for online classes including reading, watching videos, completing learning activities, engaging in discussions, and working on assignments.
Take an Inventory of Your Course Activities
This is one way the course design plan really shines as a planning tool. Using the design plan as a guide, you will have a high level view or everything you’re asking a student to review and engage with in a given week. If you’ve selected a textbook chapter, you’ll be able to see the page count. Including websites, articles and other documents here will give you an overall picture of the reading required each week. Next, the media such as podcasts or video can be accounted for based on the segments selected or the total run time. As you fill out the course design plan you might start to get something like this:
| Week | Module/ Topic | Objectives | Readings | Media | Activities and Assessments |
| 1 | Introduction to the discipline |
differentiate our topic from similar areas of study identify conceptual approaches used in our topic describe examples our topic in the real world list traits associated with our topic differentiate these three concepts within our topic |
Textbook, chapter 2, pages 21-38 (17 pages) | Lecture Video (5:39)
YouTube video (3:49) Films on Demand (45:13) |
Quiz (15 questions)
Discussion Forum (chain discussion format) |
Calculator
Wake Forest University has developed a second version of an online workload calculator which can assist you in estimating the workload of your class. The calculator does not provide any descriptors, so for further detail expand the relevant content below:
[accordion][spoiler title=”Course Duration” open=”no” style=”default” icon=”plus” anchor=”” class=””]The number of weeks the class is offered. Note that if you are trying to calculate your course at a week by week level, set this to one week and only include information from that row in your course design plan.[/spoiler] [spoiler title=”Reading Assignments” open=”no” style=”default” icon=”plus” anchor=”” class=””]Using the page count listed in your course design plan you can make more specific adjustments to the reading estimate:
| Density (words per page) | Difficulty | Purpose | |||
| 450 | e.g. paperback book pages, or 6″ x 9″ pages of journal articles | No new concepts | students have enough background knowledge to immediately understand the ideas | Survey | students scan the reading an possibly skip entire sections |
| 600 | e.g. academic monograph pages | Some new concepts | students are not familiar with the meaning of some ideas expressed | Understand | students read to understand each sentence in the text |
| 750 | e.g. textbook pages that are 25% images, or full-size pages of two-column journal articles | Many new concepts | students are not familiar with the meaning of many of the ideas expressed | Engage | students answer questions or complete tasks related to the reading |
In addition to the number of pages of writing your students will complete, there are other variables that are tabulated as well:
| Density (words per page) | Genre | Drafting | |||
| 250 | e.g. Double-Spaced, Times New Roman, 12-Point Font, 1″ Margins | Reflection/ Narrative | e.g. journal entries, reflections, or response format essays requiring little planning | No Drafting | e.g. a draft essay or paper |
| 500 | e.g. Single-Spaced, Times New Roman, 12-Point Font, 1″ Margins | Argument | e.g. journal entries, reflections, or essays requiring deep engagement with content | Minimal Drafting | e.g. an essay or paper that was revised at least once |
| Research | e.g. journal entries, reflections, or essays requiring detailed planning an further research | Extensive Drafting | e.g. an essay or paper with several revisions | ||
What are my options if I’ve asked my students to do more than I assumed?
Now that you have an estimate of the workload for your class you have a high level view of weeks that are more work and those that are less work. For cases where you have a lot more work than the upper range discussed at the beginning of this post you have a few options:
- Revise the reading list or the expectations of the readings. For example, if the key takeaways for a particular reading are on select pages you can let students know where to focus their attention or write instructional material that weaves portions of a single longer reading together.
- Let students know the expectations. For example, if they are just meant to survey a reading (as you input into the calculator) then make that clear. If they are meant to engage deeply with the reading, provide guiding questions well in advance.
- Reduce or consolidate assignments. For example, if students are asked to create a journal entry every week for submission you might consider having students submit a synthesis drawing on several journal entries. While students would still be encouraged to create the journal entries, this would allow them to focus on expressing ideas rather than on the formatting and function of a formal assignment.
- Provide opportunities for students to check their understanding. If there are key takeaways from a particular video or reading, providing students an opportunity to check their understanding with feedback can help them to focus their attention and promotes learning. This is more effective for learning than having students review material over and over again without an opportunity to practice.
- Prioritize the types of activities students will do in a given week. If one week the focus in on a discussion, consider moving any readings or videos that are not directly related to that discussion into a “supplementary resources” area in your course. Distinguish for yourself, and for your students what elements in your course are directed-study and which are self-directed study.
Attribution
Pile of open books flickr photo by bjwhite66212 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA 2.0) license
Additional Resources
Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual review of psychology, 64, 417-444.
Koedinger, K. R., McLaughlin, E. A., Jia, J. Z., & Bier, N. L. (2016, April). Is the doer effect a causal relationship? How can we tell and why it’s important. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge (pp. 388-397).
McDaniel, E. A. (2011). Level of student effort should replace contact time in course design. Journal of Information Technology Education, 10(10). “Time on Task in Online Courses” by Michael Starenko, Rochester Institute of Technology is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Powell, K., Stephens‐Helm, J., Layne, M., & Ice, P. (2012). Quantifying Online Learning Contact Hours. Administration Issues Journal: Education, Practice, and Research, Vol. 2, Issue 2.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1056395.pdf
Samuels, S. J., & Dahl, P. R. (1975). Establishing Appropriate Purpose for Reading and Its Effect on Flexibility of Reading Rate. Journal of Educational Psychology, 67(1), 38.
2 responses to “How Much Should I Assign? Estimating Workload in Asynchronous Classes”
I understand why faculty and institutions (and students) are thinking about this, and your post has a lot of useful suggestions, but I have a lot of concerns over this X hours per work approach, even with some understanding that there is a range,
It seems assumptive to define this based on words per minute reading or lengths of videos. How do you factor in time spent thinking? Reflecting? That some students operate at very different speeds and efficiencies?
When we say “6” hours per work, what is the range on that? And if students are low or high, do we really know much about why they are off the mean?
And you do mention this, but some of these formulaic approaches seem to suggest it always has to be X hours per week, like punching a clock. Course design should include periods of varying intensity (e.g. more work around big projects, exams, longer reflections).
In experience one of the biggest factors in time going out of control is not having some guidelines or understandings of how to ask for help. Students don’t always want to ask for it (“don’t want to look dumb”) so they often spend too much time trying to figure out things themselves rather than get help. Knowing to seek help is an underrated skill. And knowing what to do to change that experience is the challenge to design into a course – the modes of *how* to ask for help like email, contact forms is not what I refer to– more about how we change the culture of understanding around asking for help.
Hi Alan,
Thanks for the comment! I have to admit, I really struggled with this post, not only for some of the reasons you point out, but because it didn’t feel the same to write in a different space as it usually does here on the Blogwall. I appreciate having a chance to think about this in more detail now that it’s been a day or so.
The time reflecting and thinking is completely left out of the calculator, and that’s something I need to go back and include and bring up in consults. I just used the calculator on this very post and it came up at 4.5 hours which is about how long it took to pen the post. That doesn’t account for me thinking about it while making lunch, or some of the inspiration, or seeing what other folks had written (such as Dave’s post http://davecormier.com/edblog/2020/06/20/how-much-work-should-my-online-course-be-for-me-and-my-students/).
It is very much a blackbox for students that end up off of the 6-hours mean. In one course where we had estimated that most weeks were about “8 hours of work” we had students report that they spent anywhere from 3.5 – 14 hours a week on that course. The average really does us a disservice in that case, and I can’t recall what the median student reported time was at the moment. That feedback from the students did prompt a revision to a few of the weeks in that particular course.
While that previous course was more “even” across the weeks, I think that was in the design with learning activities and quizzes. A more recent course I worked on is just six-weeks long and is heavier in readings and discussion in weeks 2 & 3 and then trail off as the type of activity changes to assignments and presentations. Those latter weeks we tried to low-ball the estimated work to hopefully provide more headroom for the assignments if students needed. I had run a rough estimate (more based on my gut) and let the instructor know where I thought things were way too heavy. We talked about it and settled on some different approaches, like providing pathways so students could have more choice about the activities and readings they engaged more with in a given week. In other cases we used jigsaw discussions to reduce the reading load but still engage students with a breadth of concepts.
For both of these examples I mostly went with my gut and calculated out for specific activities. What I hate about that calculator is the “number of weeks” thing giving the impression as you mentioned that every week should be rinse and repeat, and I now realize I missed this. Maybe a better post would have been going through how I might use the calculator on a specific example.
This type of tool I think runs the same risk as things like “best practices” in online learning. Blanket statements like “your course should be 6 hours of work per week” or “every week should have a discussion forum” or “every week should have a quiz” are just options, but when taken (as they will be) as rules for online learning then they make not great experiences. I can recall a couple of courses I took online in school that really followed that weekly discussion format and they were punishing. I don’t think there’s any other way to describe them. As a student I didn’t know how to engage with them in a meaningful way and we never really got the needed guidance or feedback to help manage the discussions. I was exactly that student you mention who didn’t ask for help!
I hind sight, scanning the post again perhaps a different frame to take is “is my course design likely to overwhelm students, and what can I do about that?”
Now I’m rambling, so I’ll hit post comment and keep thinking about this one.