How to Measure Student Workload in Your Course
Have you ever received student feedback with comments that your course included “too much work”? How much is too much? What kind of assignments and tasks would equal the amount of work required for example in a course of 4 credit points (a total of 108 hours of work)?
You can calculate an estimate of how much work each type of learning task will take by using some of the available workload calculators, such as the UEF’s or Fitech’s. Naturally there are elements not covered in these calculators to take into consideration, too. Nevertheless, these calculators will give you a rough idea of the average workload for students with each assignment type you use in your course:
- The calculators available for UEF staff, called Mitta-laskuri: Mitta-peruslaskuri.xlsx or Mitta-laskuri(kumulatiivinen).xlsx. You can change the language of the Excel files into English. The Excel files are very practical as they automatically sum up the work hours as you fill in the data.
- The planning form on page 6 in Fitech’s Learning Design Toolkit, available to everyone.
Below, a screenshot of the UEF “Mitta-peruslaskuri” in English, and a screenshot of the page 6 of Fitech’s Learning Design Toolkit: Workload Estimation.
