Time Expectations

The screenshot above is from an effort to understand the time expectations for students and instructors at an early stage in course design. The course was inherited with a large amount of content, assignments, readings, and videos. A new hybrid course was developed from this content. This is just a convenient way to describe a common misunderstood concept in course design. Namely, the implications of time commitment. We made this chart on the fly, and later developed an Excel workbook to more neatly organize the information.

For each week, time allocation in hours is specified for:

• face-to-face classes
• synchronous online sessions
• expectation of self-paced online work that students will engage in
  • reading assignments
  • watching video assignments
  • asynchronous activities (e.g. discussion forum posts and reading)
  • quizzes and exams

We then discussed the what the appropriate time commitment for an instructor in this course would be. When compared to the actual contract hours available for instructing the course, it becomes obvious if adjustments are needed, considering a reasonable proportion of instructional time to expectation of student time spent in the course.

We would like to acknowledge that we live, learn, work, and play on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples of the QayQayt and Kwikwetlem First Nations.