Distance Teaching Workloads Wendy Doube Monash University Gippsland Campus Churchill VIC 3842
[email protected] Abstract In this paper, we describe a formula for calculating the teaching workload for students who are studying off campus both on and off-line. Initially the faculty of information technology developed a proposal for calculating academic workloads. This proposal reflected the rigid teacher centred learning structures of traditional on-campus delivery and made no allowance for the services required by off-campus students. In response, teachers of off-campus students developed a complementary proposal, based on actual time logs, which reflected their student centred approach to learning. Contrary to popular wisdom, off-campus teaching was found to be more time-consuming than on-campus.
Keywords Teaching workload, distance education, flexible delivery, student centered learning, electronic educational environments
1
Introduction
The terms "flexible delivery", "open learning", "student centered learning" are appearing with increasing regularity on higher education agendas and planning sessions. Electronic technologies, in particular the internet, bear the promise of freeing students from the constraints of time and place, enabling them to study at home, in the workplace, in fact anywhere, at any time and at any stage of their lives[ 1]. However universities are still centrally organised usually in fiat hierarchical structures. Rigid university schedules complete with rules and regulations, forms and conditions do not easily accommodate flexible study regimes. Teachers, used to autonomy and control, are not always receptive to the collaborative multidisciplinary approach
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necessary for teaching and learning using multimedia technology. Few teachers and administrations wholeheartedly display readiness to hand greater autonomy to students[8]. Much of the impetus for change is motivated by financial and market share concerns. Electronic educational environments can provide education to greater numbers of students and benefit from economies of scale. Distance education can attract students from far beyond local markets - in fact from all over the world. Off-campus students do not require buildings so construction and maintenance costs can be saved. Web-based content can avoid printing and mailing costs. Teachers do not have to be paid to stand in front of classes. In spite of appearing progressive, this view of flexible delivery and distance learning assumes a traditional teacher centered model in which the student is merely the recipient of teacher-controlled content and assessment. It assumes a low level of student-student and teacher-student dialogue. From a financial perspective the problem with this view is that it ignores the fact that competitive global markets must be supported by competitive global services. Expensive administrative and technical infrastructures that reach far beyond an individual institution's span of control must be set up and maintained. Technical equipment and software, unlike buildings, have a short life span. Only large numbers of students can justify the investment. Experienced teachers and domain experts cannot walk into classrooms with little preparation beyond their expertise. They must painstakingly prepare detailed high quality resources. Electronic materials production is extremely expensive and requires multidisciplinary teams. Research and development into electronic educational environments, especially pedagogical approaches, must take place on an on-going basis[ 1]. Most importantly, typical distance students are mature and expect a service for the fees they pay. That service involves support from their teachers, classmates and domain experts in the form of dialogue[5]. Experienced deliverers of distance education often find that off-campus students place far greater demands on their time than on-campus students do[3]. 347
hours/wk
hours/yr
percent
Unit of measure
lh
43h
2.857%
Accounted Load (Baseline)
18h
774h
51.4%
Granted Nominal Load (indicative split below)
17h
731h
48.6%
~h
86h
!5.7%
2ommunication and Initiatives
~h
129h
.6%
~,linimal Research or Scholarly Activities
~h
215h
14.3%
7h
301h
20%
Personal planning and organization
[..
Consulting/Community Engagement (ld/wk) ii
TOTAL
35h
1505h
100%
Table 1: Information Technology Staff Load Proposal Summary
2 Calculating traditional teaching loads Apart from face-to-face teaching, meetings and conferences, academics operate within relatively less rigid time constraints than many other professions. It is assumed that they will self-regulate their time allocation to tasks such as student consultation, materials preparation, research and administration. Within an institution, academics tend to allocate their time with differing priorities. In order to prioritise organisational expectations and deal with equity issues, many institutions prescribe their expectations for academic teaching loads with formulae that attempt to equate the different tasks. The Faculty of Information Technology (FIT) at Monash University offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs both off-campus and on-campus within five schools dispersed between five different campuses. It also is developing a strong research culture. The Gippsland campus has been the main provider of distance education for many years and now other campuses are following suit. Nearly all IT courses at Gippsland are offered both on and off campus simultaneously. Off campus students are provided with up to twelve hours a semester of on-campus classes at weekend schools. All academics in the faculty are expected to engage in a combination of teaching, research, administration and community service activities - meeting at least minimum requirements in all areas. They are given considerable freedom to choose they way they meet those requirements. An FIT Staff Load Calculation Proposal[6] was developed to calculate workloads for FIT academics taking into consideration different preferences amongst the four areas. It draws on approaches and formulae that have "stood the test of time" in eight similar organisations. A mixed quantitative and qualitative approach is taken. A total yearly workload of 35 hours per week in a 43 week year
(1500 hours per year) is normalised. In other words 35 hours per week for a year is equal to 100% load. 15 hours per week for a 43 week year is 0.1% load. Table 1 shows how the load is divided into two basic components - 17 hours per week of teaching related activities (Accounted Load) and 18 hours per week of non-teaching activities (Granted Nominal Load). The Granted Nominal Load includes "general overhead times such as personal planning and time management, telephone, mail processing, project and department meetings, consultancies, conference committee and organisation duties, various unaccounted minor administrative duties, new degree and research proposals, and last but not least a minimal amount of research! This includes also many informal interactions with students and staff of the School, the fabric of a live and thriving scholarly and research culture. " The Accounted Load displayed in Table 2 deals with the diverse tasks of teaching and research supervision.
3
Applying On-campus Formulae to Distance Teaching Loads
When off-campus lecturers apply the formula they find that their Accounted Load is well below the required baseline because it does not fall clearly into the categories of Lecturing, Tutorials, Practicals or Laboratories. Yet many lecturers report that off-campus teaching appears to be more time-consuming than on-campus teaching. Working within the guidelines of the faculty workload formula, two possible approaches to the calculation of distance teaching workloads were identified: 1. Apply the proposal teaching load formula for tutorials to off-campus students. This approach provides only a broad approximation and could significantly under -estimates the actual teaching load 348
hrs/wk hrs/yr
percent
Lecturing (lhr/week full year) Lecture new subject
2
86
5.71%
Lecture with revision
1.25
~3.75
L57%
Repeat, parallel or night lecture
1
43
2.86%
Admin assistance medium/large subjects, multiples of
1
43
2.86%
Subjects run as mostly seminars
0.5
21.5
1.43%
Normal subject converted to reading
0.1
4.3
0.286%
Smallish subject (50-100)
2
86
5.71%
Medium subject (100-200)
4
172
11.42%
Large subject (> 200)
6
258
17.14%
Honours subject (> 10)
2
86
5.71%
Masters subject (> 10)
2
86
5.71%
tutorial/Lab contact
1
43
2.86%
Tutorial preparation
1
43
2.86%
Futorial marking and consultation
I
43
2.86%
Final year industry project
1
43
2.86%
Subject coordination (full-year) add:
¢¢e
Tutorials, Practicals, Laboratories and Projects (lhr/week full year) r~
t,~
r,'r
rtf
Table 2: Information Technology Staff Load Proposal Accounted Load 2.
Apply a formula specifically for off-campus teaching. Actual time logs from six members of staff teaching 5 programming and 3 non-programming subjects were used to develop an initial formula. On average the classes consisted of 35 on-campus and 100 off-campus students. A form that performs the calculations is now on the staff web page for other staff to trial and results should be available by March 2000.
The second approach is described in this paper. Staff logs revealed that off-campus students of computer programming courses required considerably more time than off-campus students in other courses. 4
Calculating Distance Teaching Loads
Some components of off-campus teaching, like preparation and marking of assignments, may differ in nature from equivalent on-campus tasks but probably take an equivalent amount of time. The major differences between off and on-campus teaching loads are in the areas of materials preparation and student support. In both areas control of the processes of learning is passed to the student. Students study at their own pace and request help when they need it, often after normal working hours or at
weekends. Allowance must be made when they cannot meet deadlines. 4.1 Materials Preparation Materials for DE students must be comprehensive and meticulously prepared. Unlike on-campus lectures and tutorials, inadequacies and errors can be traumatic for distance students because they cannot be compensated for and clarified in a face-to-face environment. Production schedules dictate that any materials that are sent by regular mail to students must be perfect and ready, for production at least three months before the beginning of semester. 4.1.1
Printed
The distance education materials system at Monash Gippsland relies heavily on printed material. Very few textbooks are completely tailored to individual subjects. At the very least, students rely on paced subject books to clarify subject requirements, start them off and direct them to other resources. Most subject books also fill in gaps and elucidate complex concepts in the other resources. The average subject book/guide contains approximately 80 pages. Initial creation and major revisions of print&!
349
materials would conservatively take at least five full time weeks (175 hours). Included in this time is production supervision and liaison. Sometimes lecturers have to provide print-ready material - extremely time-consuming. The printed materials often form the basis of on-campus lectures. As off-campus students expect to find the oncampus lectures on the web, a detailed, carefully presented electronic record of the lecture is required. Preparation of lectures of a new subject takes approximately one day a week for twelve weeks (84 hours), roughly equivalent to the time allocation in the original proposal: Printed subject materials 4.1.2
4 hrs/week
175 hrs/year
Electronic
Subject Web Pages These are used for uni-directional mass communication and are especially useful for dynamic updates of materials. Preparation and conversion to web format of content and support files, creation and update of the html files would take half a day a week during teaching weeks : 4 * 26 hours. I Subjectwebpages 12.4hrs/week 1104hrs/year I CD-ROM
In some subjects, usually first year, some of the electronic content on the subject web pages is also included on CDROM. (The CD-ROM also contains multimedia content developed in a different project). This is an organisational task and would probably take one or two working days to compile the material, clarify copyright, create user instructions, verify that the files have been correctly burned with filenames that have survived the CD burner software and provide the materials production centre with correct distribution instructions. This time allocation probably does not warrant general inclusion. 4.2 Student Support In the Information Technology Staff Load Calculation Proposal the on-campus criterion closest to an approximation of off-campus student support can be found in the section: "Subject co-ordination - student consultation before subject enrolment throughout the semester, electronically or faceto-face (although in the first instance tutors will provide that contact);" GSCIT computing students use WebFace[7] an in-house web-based integrated support environment[4]. Virtual classrooms meet in newsgroups allocated to specific subjects. Assignment submission, processing and recording is also managed by the system. Bearing in mind the pivotal role of newsgroup communication, off-campus student support can be placed in three categories.
4.2.1
Synchronous communication
Most models of sound educational practice rely on dialogue to promote learning. On-campus classrooms /laboratories/lectures provide synchronous group access to student-teacher, student-student dialogue. This economy of scale within a manageable time-frame is largely absent from off-campus communication. Synchronous communication is available for GSCIT students: At weekend schools Most subjects provide three to four hours of classes for each of three weekend schools. Although time off in lieu may be taken, usually weekend school teaching is additional to the normal teaching load. Assuming that oncampus lectures are calculated at 24 contact hours a semester, weekend school lectures can be calculated as half the proposal's 'Lectures with Revision' load.
Lecture - revisi°n
I 0"625 hrsJweek
I 26875 hrs/year
By telephone Students use the telephone when electronic communication may not be available or when a more complex dialogue is required. For example before enrolment, for course advice, during set-up problems or assignment difficulties. Some students seem to appreciate hearing their lecturer's voice and it may be difficult to tactfully terminate the call. Although telephone can be extremely time-consuming, it is typically less popular then the newsgroups or email. Varying with lecturer availability and the type of subject, telephone could be estimated as:
I o6 ,,woo 4.2.2
I o .,yea
I
Asynchronous electronic communication
Electronic communication has become the preferred mode of most GSCIT off-campus information technology students. Asynchronous communication enables students to communicate when they most require assistance usually evenings, weekends and school holidays. Many GSCIT lecturers make themselves available at those times, especially the weekend before an assignment is due. Newsgroups for student-teacher, student-student mass communication Duplication of otherwise frequently asked questions and their solutions is largely eliminated by newsgroups. Students can use their own experience to help their classmates but their replies must be carefully monitored because they can be incorrect or incomplete.
The average student in subjects offered off-campus makes six postings per programming subject and two postings for other subjects. 1.5 student postings in programming subjects and 2 postings in other subjects receive a lecturer reply. Reading a posting and putting it in context takes 350
approximately 2 minutes. Posting a approximately 10 minutes. The formula:
reply
4.2.3
takes
]PC/Talk as a means of mass communication presents
time in minutes = class size* (2 mins * number of student postings + 10 mins * number of lecturer replies)
difficulties such as a tendency to degrade into non-course related topics, exclusion of students who cannot attend at that time or cannot afford lengthy logon time. Management of records of a chat session for reference can be cumbersome. In the context of GSCIT courses IRC can therefore be seen as social rather than content support for students and will not be included in the load calculations.
becomes class size * 42 for programming subjects and class size * 14 for other subjects Obviously the load for the larger unsustainable and has to be shared.
class
Synchronous electronic communication
sizes
is
5
Conclusion
A summary of the electronic asynchronous communication teaching load is incorporated into the overall off-campus teaching load summary in Table 3.
Educational institutions are looking to electronic environments to support distance education. Often they assume that financial benefits will result from little investment beyond infrastructure spending, In fact offcampus on-line delivery requires systemic changes in teaching and learning approaches. These can be summarised as a shift from teacher to student centred learning. Frequently lecturers bear the consequences of this oversight working increasingly long hours often at night and weekends. Academic staff logs were used to develop a formula for calculating workloads for offcampus teaching. The formula is to be used in conjunction with a faculty proposal for calculating academic nonteaching workloads. The formula confirms what many distance teachers have long suspected - off-campus student centred learning can demand more teacher time than traditional teacher controlled on-campus learning.
Activity
Programming subjects where different from other subjects
References
hrs/~ hrs/ week year
[2] Bork, A. Highly interactive distance learning environments. Proceedings of 1CCS99, Japan 1999.
Email for student-teacher individual communication
Approximately each student in a programming subject receives six emall replies from their lecturer and one in non-programming subjects. Together with reading, each reply averages five minutes. Help submissions
In programming subjects students supply problem program source code either as a designated assignment help submission, in newsgroups or by email. Approximately one help submission is received for each student per programming subject. An extremely conservative estimate is 15 minutes per reply.
Nonprogramming subjects
week
year
[1] Boettcher, J. Development Time, Costs and Instructional Design of a Web Course. http://www.cren.net/-jboettch/time.htm
[3] Dann, W.P. An evaluation of on-campus vs distance learning styles. Proceedings of FIE 98, Arizona, 1998.
Student support Weekend schools
0.625
26.875
Telephone
0.6
26
0.8
34.4
3.4
146.2
100-200 students
2.2
94.6
10
430
>200 students
3.8
163.4
17
731
[4] Doube,W. A browser based system to support and deliver distance education. Proceedings of FIE98, Arizona, 1998.
Electronic Communication
