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[humanitiesanon]

I am showing my age, but I distinctly remember when I was in college being told that 3 hours per week for every hour of class credit was supposed to be the guideline for a good grade.  Now it has officially declined to 2 hours.  Does anyone else remember the rule as 3 (long ago and far away)?

[zharkov]

I actually came across an old catalog from the 70s that described a credit hour as one hour of class per week and two hours of outside work. I also recall mention of 2 to 3 hours in an old study skills book.  I put the 2:1 figure in my syllabi, but also tell students that if they are not doing well in a course, maybe they need to increase that to 3:1.

[anthroid]

I expect two hours in lower division, and two hours plus infinity in upper division.

No, seriously, 2 hours lower division and 3 hours upper division per credit hour earned.

[acrimone]

I tell my students that there's no standard, that they just need to come to class prepared, and that it might take a student 45 minutes to get through some reading, and it might take 10 hours.  I tell them that if they have really put in 10 hours of work on reading, and still don't get it, to draft up some good questions and come to office hours for help, or to call one of their classmates to discuss the reading.

If I were to announce some sort of standard, I'd probably recommend 9 hours per week for just about every course I teach. 

None of this includes time for writing papers, mind you.

[jds2006]

I was a freshman in 1975. A lot of us got the feeling that we were being overworked. We brought it to one of the chem profs' attention. He told us that we should study three hours for each hour in class or in lab. "No," we said. "That will not do, now will it?" "Oh, but yes," he said, and in our next mass class meeting he calculated on the board:

18 hours of class + 6 hours of lab = 24 hours obligated to school.

(24 X 3 = 72).

Plus 72 hours of studying = 96 hours obligated to school.

Plus 2 hours daily (14 total) for personal hygiene, meals, etc = 110 hours obligated to school.

Plus 8 hours daily (56 hours) for sleep = 166 hours.

"Now take all those hours" (he said, smiling at us as if we were the veriest fools in the land) "and subtract them from the 168 hours in a week."

"See!" he said. "See! You have two whole hours for fun each and every WEEK!"

[anthroid]

I was a first-year student in 1976 (props established).  I want to be jds's chemistry teacher.  That is so way cool!

[sappho]

I remember that when I was a freshman we were told that two hours out-of-class prepation (for each hour spent in class) was sufficient if you wanted to simply pass the class.  Beyond that, each student was to decide what they were willing to work for.

[csguy]

I tell my students that I need to make up for the slackers that don't give their students enough to do.

[professor_pat]

Hah. My first quarter at my current SLAC school, fresh from a new-faculty workshop that gave us lots of great ideas of ways to work with students, I incorporated far too many of those ways into the class. Contact time per week was 4 hr class + 3 hr lab = 7 hours.

On the anonymous midterm feedback I requested, one furious student wrote that she was spending "16!!!" hours a week on my class - including class time (=not even up to 1.5x, much less 2x). Every student in that class wrote that hu felt overwhelmed and that I was asking way too much of hu time-wise.

Part of their sense may have been that this was their one required lab-science course, so they were unused to having lab time at all, much less lab-writeup time. I checked with other science faculty about their expectations for lab-writeup time: significantly greater than mine, even.

One occasionally hears "2 hours outside class for every hour in class" maxim around my campus. But on the formal end-of-term evaluation forms, for the question that asks students to estimate their out-of-class time spent on work for this course, the highest available category out of four options is "7-10 hours per week" = a multiplier of 2-2.5 for a standard non-lab 4-hr-weekly class. I'd guess that students interpret the structure of this question as implying that such a ratio would be way above the norm. I would be interested to know what proportion of students at my U. mark that option - I imagine very few.

For other science faculty out there - does the 2:1 or 3:1 ratio hold for your lab courses?

[professor_pat]

One further thought. When this topic has come up, a number of faculty have pointed out that because tuition is high at our private school, most students hold jobs. It's felt by some that it's both inconsiderate and unrealistic to ask too much non-class study time of students who've been forced to work because of our tuition rate.

Should expected study time vary inversely with tuition?

[voxprincipalis]

Just to throw something in to affect the standard deviation (which I learned about on that other thread):

My private instrumental students have one hour of studio lesson time with me per week. (Well, we have a weekly studio class for 1 hour also, but each student's participation in that fluctuates, so I'm not counting it.)

I expect them to practice a minimum 2 hours a day for their lessons (many schools would require more, but I'm all about the working smart instead of hard thing -- if they are efficient, 2 concentrated and focused hours daily is enough). That's 14 hours of out-of-class work to every hour of in-class work.

So, any of you who have students griping about this -- you can feel free to use me as an example of Bad Cop. Anything else will seem eminently reasonable in comparison.

VP

[schoolmarm]

VP,

I was just going to send my majors an email about time management, since they all look like the walking dead this week. (Just found out that several are taking 21-23 hours and that a few of them are in FIVE ensembles....are they nuts?  I am seriously wondering how they got approval for that overload, as these are students who are neither Einstein nor Mozart.)

My rule of thumb for applied lessons is to practice one hour per day for every credit you take.  1 credit on a secondary instrument yields 1 hour per day in the practice room.  3 credits?  3 hours per day will keep your nose above water.  Want to be better?  Practice smarter or longer!

For other classes, 2 hours out for every hour in works well.  Piano lab=2 hours in and 4 out per week.  This gives them an hour almost every day.   

Got any hints on how to motivate them to practice their aural skills and sight singing?  Apparently they think that they can just come in and do this without practicing.

For grad students, my "time management" advice is to double the undergrad hours.  4 hours out for every hour in class.  3 grad credits is like taking 6 undergrad credits, etc.

[voxprincipalis]

Hi Schoolmarm,

I always think this is an interesting discussion -- the "how much should I practice" question. My problem is that students will say, "oh? X number of hours? What can I do to take up that much time?" and then they don't practice thoughtfully, with the result that they have wasted a lot of time and are frustrated to boot. I am about to start writing an article on an approach to this subject, once I've finished the other project I'm working on (see below). Sometimes I take a studio class and run it as a practice lab, where I ask students to bring in pieces they're still working on and practice for us. Then they get hints, techniques, and reminders, which everyone benefits from, and it's reinforced for them that I expect every minute in the practice room to be a thinking minute, not a zone-out minute. So far this is working well. Of course I keep tweaking as I go along, as do we all. I've begun doing etudes in studio class too, and this is helping a lot.

I should note that the 2-hour block does NOT include practicing ensemble music, and that I expect them to take 1/4 of their practice time every day (more if they can afford it) for scales and arpeggio practice, since this will make the rest of their work easier.

As for aural skills and sight-singing, I have been working on a project that impacts that. This week my school has been on fall break and my major project for the break has been to finish up my book proposal and get it ready to send out (which I am *almost* ready to do!) -- anyway, it is an approach that you might find interesting. I would be really interested to hear your thoughts on it, but don't want to hassle you if you haven't the time or aren't interested, neither of which I will take personally. So, PM me if you would like to chat about it; I have wanted to connect with you anyway, just because we are in the same field and you have tons of experience and sensible advice.

By the way, neither Einstein nor Mozart -- LOL!

VP