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[amlithist]

What is a "typical" student capacity for others' online courses?  At our CC, it is 25.  The reason I raise the issue is that the governance council I'm chairing this year will be looking at this. 

In particular, for those of us teaching English courses and our Capstone courses, a full online roster can quickly become daunting in terms of reading, grading and responding to 25 students. In the gen ed interdisciplinary capstones, the state mandate is a focus on gathering, analyzing, synthesizing, and reporting information.  As a result, the writing load can be very heavy, no matter what the particular topic of the course.  Case in point:  in my pop-culture related class, I have them do a 10-12 page fully documented research paper at the end, plus each student produces and shares a three-page article summary/evaluation report on one of the reading assignments.  Throw in some discussion boards and small group projects (I require substantial answers to at least five of ten offered questions in each 2-week unit, and four discussion based group projects), and the reading and grading time really can be overwhelming.

And in an English course, whether composition or a writing intensive lit section, the production of text is just nuts, as it is in a face to face classroom that caps at 26.  (No wonder your English faculty are grumpy sometimes!)

So, what caps do the rest of you have on your online courses?

[If this has been discussed at length before, my apologies, but I've only been able to find it as a tangential discussion in some older threads.]

[molli_sols]

Both places that I teach have 35 student caps in all online sections.  At one U we do 1/2 semester length classes online so a 3 credit F2F is already like a 6 credit class when online.  At the other U, we never fill near 35, but our effort is determined relative to the number of students and we get a  reduced amount if it is fewer than 20.  I like 10-15 students.  It's just enough for a hopping discussion board, but not too much to grade all the homework assignments, projects, etc. on top of my normal class load.  I'm in the sciences so YMMV.

[zuzu_]

My CC also caps all online classes at 25.

As a comp instructor, I think that's huge. But they argue that attritition in online classes is so bad that you almost always end up with <20 fairly quickly. I actually think it's a fair argument. While you could argue that big class sizes increase attrition, in my experience there is a reliable percentage that will always drop out fairly quickly, and these students' decision to drop is clearly unrelated to any substantive experience in the course.

[larryc]

20 at my old school, but professors were encouraged to take up to 20 more, with a sweetener of $75 a student.

[erikjensen]

I teach online science and we have capacities connected to those of our face to face courses. A single lab section is 24 while a double lab section is 48. I usually let in 5 or 10 extra because of the higher attrition. We mostly teach single lab sections.

By the way, your course sounds excellent. I'd suggest polling your students to see what work you do has the least benefit to them, in case there is some aspect of the course you could change or eliminate without harm. My class was a ridiculous amount of work for both me and my students when I started it. You might also take a look at some other online English courses to see how they are organized.

[yatchie]

For my math classes, our max is 50.  I'm at a CC.  However, our load is calculated based on the number of people so I basically get twice the number of units for twice that number of people.  So in reality, the upper limit is around 125.

[magistra]

A question: is it one professor per class, or is it a professor and graders?  If your school ever uses graders, that changes the numbers.

[yatchie]

A question: is it one professor per class, or is it a professor and graders?  If your school ever uses graders, that changes the numbers.

I'm assuming this question is for me... it's just a professor.  Granted I now use MyMathLab which grades homework and quizzes automatically while I grade the four exams students are required to show up in person for.  Previously, all homework and tests were graded by hand, and only quizzes were done online. My school does not use graders (or at least they don't pay for them).

[magistra]

No, it was for Amlit, and in general.  Just something to think about when you're planning courses.

And you still have four quizzes to grade!  Never act like the website is doing your work for you -- first, it usually is more of a time suck than the work was in the first place, and second, you don't want more students, do you?  Especially when you have 125 students and four exams.  Really, you need to start practicing your harried look.  And avoid tanning parlors -- you want to look pale and wan and like you've been hunched over your computer all day for the next time someone asks about your course!

[der_gadfly]

What is a "typical" student capacity for others' online courses?  At our CC, it is 25.  The reason I raise the issue is that the governance council I'm chairing this year will be looking at this. 

MOST colleges that I have researched on this (for which there is data available) hover in at 25-35, most in the 25-28 range. My literature review on best practices suggests that 24 is optimal, but also assumes low attrition.

In a capstone course, where students have had prior online course experience, the cap CAN be higher. the trick is to organize the work more like an online grad level course, with discussions, a few short reaction papers (1000 words - teach them to be clear, concise and cogent), and one FINAL paper due 2-3 weeks before the course ends.

For English classes, especially the writing intensive, the problems are more severe. instructors have to 'pace' the assignment due dates. Now this is less of a problem if the faculty have only one online section each at a time, but becomes a major burnout issue if they are doing 4 or 5 sections online in a semester.

This is NOT going to sit well with some on the fora, but think back to when you were a student. Did you take 5 writing intensive courses in a semester? probably not: you took basket-weaving, or underwater dance, or some other course to offset the workload. Why can faculty not handle ONE 'light' class in semesters when they also have several sections of writing intensive classes? because of seniority rules, contracts, etc...... In order to make this happen, there has to be some give-and-take.

I interviewed one long-time online faculty member and was told that each semester, one faculty member could 'handle' @100 students online, so there may be some reason to look at total head-count-contact rather than section size per se. PM me if you want to discuss....