For most faculty, the flexibility of a workday is a wonderful perk of the job. We’re generally not tied to 9-5 workdays with strict times for tasks. For the most part, we don’t have hard and fast rules about how and when to prep for classes. But sometimes a lack of boundaries, specifically in time, can actually lead to a decrease in productivity.
ProfHacker Natalie has posted previously on the timer as an everyday essential item. She touched upon a specific use of a timer which I think is helpful to apply to course prep efforts. To quote from her post,
Set yourself limits. Decide that you will spend only X minutes doing something, set your timer, and stick to it. This is especially helpful for activities that could go on forever (“online research” or checking your feed reader).
I’d add to this list to use a timer to set your time limit for prepping for courses. This is especially effective if you’re prepping for a new course. Since I moved institutions, my course preps are different; I’ve now got algebra-based general physics instead of calculus-based, and for the first time for me, a course for physics majors (analytical mechanics). I want to do the best that I can in prepping for these, but along with teaching efforts I must balance getting ready for labs, contributing to the life of my department through taking on miscellaneous responsibilities and just generally helping out, meeting with students, writing some grants, and, in the future, committee assignments (my college generously protects most new faculty from assignments in their first year). Course prep could very easily spill over into time that I need to use for these other responsibilities.
Limitless course prep doesn’t mean perfect course prep. I find that I am at my most focused and do the best job with course prep when I have a set amount of time to spend. Using a simple timer has helped me be more efficient with my course prep at my new institution, and I use the alarm clock on my great multitasker, the iPod Touch
What tactics do you use to keep course prep efforts efficient? Tell us below in the comments.
[Creative Commons licensed photo by Flickr user pasukaru76.]
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11 Responses to Using a timer for efficient course prep
paul_r - October 21, 2010 at 8:37 am
This is very useful. I have not tried it, but my institution has moved to a workload model algorithm that calculates the amount of time we have to prep for teaching sessions. The model assumes that every hour of contact with a group of students, will generate an hours worth of preparation and half an hours work of marking. I am not sure how I could prepare an hours lecture in an hour, but that is what the university suggests. I may get a timer just to see how much preparation I could do within an hour. My guess is only just scratch the surface. Interesting times in which we live.
jmarlow - October 21, 2010 at 8:49 am
I use a timer for everything. In fact, right now I am on a ten minute “break” as I transition between grading student essays and working on my dissertation. As you mention, there are a number of different timers that one can take advantage of, and I use them all — iPhone, microwave timer, etc. But when I’m working on the computer, I tend to use Pester for Mac. The beauty of Pester is that when the timer pops up on your computer, it literally stops you from working on whatever you’re working on (one could view that as a hindrance or a help, but I find it helpful) until you hit “ok.”
csgirl - October 21, 2010 at 10:14 am
This is simply not realistic in computer science. I have to set up the software, and make sure everything works right. Everything has to be tested out before the students use it, because if anything goes wrong in class, they throw up their hands and say they can’t do the work. The worst part is that the prep time is highly unpredicatable. For example, I wanted my students to do a lab with a database on a remote server, and wouldn’t you know it, the connection decided to stop working the day before the class. So I spent several hours trying to diagnose the problem so I could run my class.
For a new prep, it is running me 5 to 10 hours per lecture to get ready. For a course I have taught before, it is more like 2 to 3 hours per hour of lecture time. I have been doing this for years, and can’t seem to find a way to cut down the time.
heatherwhitney - October 21, 2010 at 11:38 am
@csgirl I definitely feel your pain. I teach in physics, and I often include programming elements in lecture time. I have to prep Matlab code and make sure it runs. It definitely takes more time that some other traditional lecture prep items, but I think a timer is still helpful, even if the time periods are longer. It’s especially helpful to time when to have breaks in bigger lecture prep projects for the sake of sanity!
keri3141 - October 21, 2010 at 11:41 am
I do a fair bit of my prep right before class, so that imposes the time constraint right there. I find my lectures are freshest if I have just prepared them. I also work very efficiently right before class. Naturally, this works best in classes where I have a loose lesson plan already, so I’m not starting that morning from scratch.
drjeff - October 21, 2010 at 12:13 pm
CSGirl, when I taught a “how to use computers” class in high school, the kids used to do the “throw the hands up when anything goes wrong” thing, too. The second time they did it, though, I explained firmly that that’s not an option outside of class (your teacher’s not going to let you out of submitting a paper because Word wasn’t working on your PC), so it’s no in my class, either.
At first they thought I was joking, because being helpless had worked so well for them so far.
I would then take the opportunity to discuss alternatives that could be used to accomplish the task a different way, or ways to fix the problem.
For example, if your host-based Java enviroment is acting up, you could maybe explain that every PC has a JRE, also. Or, if you can’t access the database you need, you could discuss ways to spoof a database for testing.
That said, even for the exceedingly simple material I was teaching (how to do footnotes in Word, for example), I would still spend almost an hour per class just making sure everything was working, and at least an hour preparing handouts, sample files, etc.
But you’re in a University setting. Is it possible you could get a student to help or take over the “make sure everything works” part?
If all you had to do was prepare yourself to teach the class and double-check the lab setup, you could probably come a lot closer to an hour per class.
csgirl - October 21, 2010 at 2:26 pm
There is a difference, because I am not having the students use Word to accomplish some other task. The system they are using is the point. And yes, every system comes with a JRE – but we need the compiler, not the runtime environment. And yes, that can be downloaded – but guess what? Our students aren’t allowed to access the Windows control panel so they can’t do things like set their classpath so they can easily run a command-line Java compiler.
We don’t have graduate students to help us and our IT staff have no idea how to do any of this. So I am on my own.
mzamon - October 21, 2010 at 2:43 pm
I recently found out there is a US government standard of prep time:
Two hours for every hour presented. That is what contractors can bill.
Not a perfect ratio I am sure and some classes are more prep than others- but if one has a well thought out syllabus, that good development time spills over into easier time to invest in each class session prep-
Mary
ccchron - October 22, 2010 at 12:27 pm
The original post of course makes sense. But as the comments illustrate, what’s missing are the thoughts behind the decision on _how much_ time to set. Probably there’s no way to know this until you’ve overprepped for each new course.
kfoxt11 - October 22, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I use e.ggtimer.com You can set the amount of time that you need to complete your task. I use it quite a lot and especially when prepping prior to class.
musebrarian - October 24, 2010 at 1:10 am
I’ve used the Pomodoro technique with some success (http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/) along with the Pomodoro app (http://pomodoro.ugolandini.com/). There are also variety of other iPhone and desktop apps that do similar things.
What I tend not to like about much of this stuff, is that it’s written like it’s all or nothing. Where I’ve been successful with this is to know myself. Some days I am efficient and using my time effectively. Actually the overhead of tracking my tasks gets in my way. Other days I have a hard time getting started, I see I’m getting easily distracted – that’s when the tomato comes out.
Another benefit of this technique is that it can also help you understand how much time certain tasks *really* take. Once you’ve tracked certain tasks a few times, it can help you to judge how much time to alot in the future (whether you are using the timer or not).