L9 3 2

=Teaching staff are provided with support resources (including training, guidelines and examples) on designing effective timetabling and workload schemes. =

Evidence
Staff need to be supported in understanding the workload implications of their course designs. This is crucial as studies have shown that if students take all exercises seriously in many courses then actual time to complete spills over allocated time for course (e.g. Lawless 2000).

Reporting on research into time demands on teachers and learners in online environments, Spector (2005) identified several significant issues. He found that student time commitments increased according to the advancing level of the course and that student outcomes increased according to the amount of participation in course activities. He also noted that the overall time pattern of student activity varied through peaks and valleys during the course, and he concluded that although students appreciated the time flexibility of online courses, their level of experience with online instruction affected their perceptions of its effectiveness. Furthermore, while different forms of communication and collaboration presented varying time demands on students and teachers, overall, ‘the perception of the benefits of online instruction improves with experience in online environments’ (p. 18).

Resources
Milne & White (2005) collect together twenty-three sets of e-learning quality guidelines from an array of geographical regions. Such guidelines, or something like them, should be part of the support offered to staff by their organizations. Staff need guidelines, and examples of good practice.

Estimated assessment hours and word limits can both be used to gauge student workload for assessments (e.g. Fielding 2008).

Chambers (1992) argues that given that students study for about 40 hours per week (the Hale Report) then we can calculate what tasks it is actually possible for them to complete and to sustain a deep approach to learning. She gives a detailed example of an overloaded course where the actual calculation (i.e. readings at 100, 70 or 40wpm, viewing set video material, spending 6-7 hours on a 2000 word assignment, etc) comes out to 69 hours when the allocated block ought to be 56 hours. Note that Bristol University has a 20 hour guideline for researching and writing a short (1000-2500 word) essay, so there is much variation on what constitutes appropriate workload (Fielding 2008 gives other examples of university guidelines in his review). Teachers expecting students to cover all this material will drive a surface approach to learning and students will feel their workload is excessive. If teachers are required to make these sorts of calculations then they may find surprises in what they are expecting of students, especially when large ‘reading lists’ are handed out at the start of a course.

Course design resources that deal with workload issues can be found at: http://www.ntu.ac.uk/elearning/document_uploads/81374.pdf