Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Design and Production: Visualizing the Daily Schedule

Contact/Outside Work/Credit Hour Ratio

Definitions
UNC schools, like all accredited institutions of higher education, use the Carnegie Unit to measure credit hours. Very roughly generalized, the unit indicates that students earn one credit for 2250 minutes of work. Commonly, that's: 150 minutes of class work plus individual work per week for 15 weeks. That means 150 minutes of lab time, 50 minutes of lecture/discussion plus 100 minutes of outside work, 150 minutes of ensemble, field trip, practicum, studio etc. (For purposes of clarity, I fall back in part to hours here, rather than 50 mins. We will have to minutes, ultimately.)

This plays out in different ways:

I.               Lecture (seminar, discussion, recitation) (1credit= 1 contact hour +2 hours homework)
A one credit-hour course meets for fifteen 50-minute sessions of classroom instruction (or equivalent) with two hours of outside study for each class session. A 3 credit-hour course meets three 50-minute sessions or two 75 minute sessions per week for fifteen weeks, with six hours outside work per week.

II.               Self-Containted Laboratory Activity supervised as a group (ensemble, studio, laboratory, field trip, practicum, workshop, group studio) (1 credit =3 hours lab time + no extra work)  Non-self contained labs have less lab time and more outside expectation, to varying degrees.
One credit hour earned for the equivalent of fifteen 150-minute periods of such activity, with little or no outside preparation expected. Forty-five 150-minute sessions would earn three credits

Lecture/lab combinations also exist, with various distributions of Contact time and outside work.

III.           Experiential Learning (to my knowledge, we do not us this schedule.)
At its discretion, an institution may award credit hours for learning acquired outside the institution which is an integral part of a program of study. When life or work experience is to be credited as a concurrent portion of an academic program design, as in an internship, one semester credit hour will be awarded for each 40-45 clock-hour week of supervised academic activity that provides the learning considered necessary to program study.

IV.           Short Sessions
Credit hours may be earned in short sessions (block study, summer sessions, intersessions, etc.) proportionately to those earned for the same activity during a regular term of the institution, normally at no more than one credit per week of full-time study.




Voluntary Credit Analysis for Individual Faculty

1. Course_______________________________               Credit Hours Assigned ___________
Course Type ___________________________
(lecture, lab, ensemble, studio, workshop, practicum)
Contact Hours (per week) ____________ Average homework expected _________________
Comments      _______________________________________________________________________________   _________________________________________________________________________________
            _________________________________________________________________________________            _________________________________________________________________________________           



Schedule Visualization Mock-Up: First Draft (please send feedback to Betsy Towns)





I quote the below regulation from UNC-CH registrar, but you can find the exact text on university sites around the country. 

FEDERAL DEFINITION OF A CREDIT HOUR

For purposes of the application of this policy and in accord with federal regulations, a credit hour is an amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of student achievement that is an institutionally established equivalency that reasonably approximates:
  1. Not less than one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours out of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time, or;
  2. At least an equivalent amount of work as outlined in item 1 above for other academic activities as established by the institution including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours.
From our Trimester to Semester Conversion Guide: 
"Credit Hour Minimum for 4-year program is120  and 140 hours "

Combined with the above regulation, this translates to workload like this: 15hrs. per term= 45 hours per week/15 weeks and 140 hours 17.5 hours per term= 52.5 hours per week/15 weeks. These maximums protect students, faculty, and budget from overwork.









Base Schedule: 2nd Year Scene Design 18 credits

Base Schedule+ Homework=59 hours

Schedule with two Doubles



Load-in Weeks












Ratios used during UNCSA's trimester to semester conversion


EFFICIENCIES










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