Distance Education: Units and Student Contact Hours CCC Academic Senate’s Good Practices for Course Approval Processes, Spring 1998: Further recommendations are made for policies and practices related to Carnegie units: • separate standards and procedures for determining student units and faculty load, • establish standards for granting Carnegie units to courses based on performance criteria (open entry/open exit, independent study, and distance education), and • assure that the Board policy establishes expectations for the unit/hour relationship but maintains flexibility. The relationship that three hours of student work per week over the term of a full semester equates to one Carnegie Unit of student credit is established in regulation. Translation of these weekly hours to in‐class lecture/lab/studio/activity/discussion and out‐of‐class homework/study/activities is left to local governing board policy. The expansion of modes of delivery, short‐term courses, and open‐entry/open‐exit designs has generated some new issues worthy of discussion. CCC Academic Senate’s The Curriculum Committee: Role, Structure, Duties, and Standards of Good Practice, 1996: Approval of Credit Hours: The Carnegie Unit In reviewing and approving courses, curriculum committees must assure that the units offered are commensurate with the hours necessary for the course, both in and out of the classroom (Title 5 §55002 cited above). This is known as the Carnegie unit relationship, the essence of which requires a normative commitment of the studentʹs time of 3 hours per week per unit of credit. Clearly some students will put in more or less time, depending on their ability and level of personal commitment; however, the structure of the course in terms of semester or quarter units presumes this normative standard and is the basis of scheduling within the academic calendar. The course outline of record will state student units and the number of in‐class contact hours, which are 50‐minutes in length. CCC Academic Senate’s Guidelines for Good Practice: Effective Instructor‐Student Contact in Distance Learning, 1999 CURRICULUM COMMITTEE IMPLEMENTATION In the words of the 1995 Academic Senate position paper Curriculum Committee Review of Distance Learning Courses and Sections: 1
Curriculum committees must make a judgment as to the quality of the course based on a review of the appropriateness of the methods of presentation, assignments, evaluation of student performance, and instructional materials. Are these components adequate to achieve the stated objectives of the course? This statement, of course, applies to curriculum committee evaluation of any course. More particularly, the purpose of curriculum committee review of distance education course proposals should be to assure that both information transfer and instructor‐student interaction are well planned. The review process should be designed to document this assurance. The information transfer portion would normally be covered in traditional sections of the course outline on Student Objectives and Course Content. For example, this might well specify the number of hours spent studying material from a CD‐ROM and should show the correct relationship to the Carnegie Units of credit for the class. (See for example, Appendix 1 and Appendix 4.) An example of an “effective” model: 2. Methods of Instruction: Instructor‐Student Contact Regular Contact Please indicate type and number of instructor‐student contacts per semester and why you feel this will be effective. e‐mail communication Individual 2 ‐ 10 Via listserve _____ Via Chatroom 4 ‐ 6 Via Bulletin Board _____ Via FAQS ____ Telephone contacts 4 ‐ 6 Orientation sessions (in person) 1 (2 hrs, mandatory) Group meetings (in person) 4 (2 hrs each, mandatory) Review session (in person) 1 (2 hrs, optional) Other (describe) Contact with the instructor is to have four forms: ƒ
A minimum of five on‐campus meetings: orientation at the beginning of the semester, a midterm examination, two lecture classes on material not covered by the CD‐ROMs and a final examination, ƒ
Messages sent between the instructor and student via computer within the mathematics software, ƒ
E‐mail sent between the instructor and student, and ƒ
Weekly real‐time individual and group conferences via a web‐based chat room. 2
Hours for Content Delivery and Interaction Please show the approximate hours anticipated for student activities. 5 CD‐ROMs 5 Mandatory meetings: 1 orientation session, 1 mid‐term exam, 2 lecture sessions 1 final exam 1 Optional meeting to review for exams, lecture on selected topics Total = 60 hrs supplants normal lecture format = 10 hrs sessions designed to assist students in understanding assignments and enable instructor to evaluate student progress sessions designed to assist students in learning difficult material = 2 hrs = 72 hrs Guidelines for Good Practice: Technology Mediated Instruction, 1997: Good Practice Emphasizes Quality Time on Task Chickering and Ehrmann (1996) A major issue raised by this time‐on‐task discussion is that of the relationship of units earned to time in the classroom. The Carnegie formula which suggests that a combination of in‐class and out‐of‐class assignments should equal three hours per week for one unit of credit is generally cited as the standard for instruction. The relationship of time on task to units is less clear in a technology‐mediated learning mode. So is the connection between classroom hours and faculty load. Generally, 15 lecture hours per week equate to a full teaching load. When one spends no hours at all in classroom teaching how should oneʹs load be determined? Clearly, new or redefined relationships are needed. Curriculum groups will need to propose new approaches to calculating contact hours, seat time, student units as well as unions will need to establish new definitions of faculty load and apportionment. 3