Semester Hours

Using semester hours is a way of dividing a course into blocks of time and content so that you can easily divide programs into easy-to schedule units and determine prerequisite or co-requisite studies

The basic principle is :

• identify how many weeks in a term or semester
• identify how much time regularly given
• specify the kind of activity because this will affect how you structure the unit.

If you don't use semester hours, you need some other way to identify units of time. Some colleges run short terms, and summer terms so they might have "term hours".

Although length of semester and length of teaching period may vary, a simple practical definition is 45 hours of study over a 15-week semester, that is, three hours per week. A full load for a full-time student or instructor is usually 15 semester hours. Put another way, one week of full-time study is one semester hour. It requires 45 hours of actual student work.

Most units are either two or three semester hours. Single semester hour units spread out over a semester are too small to be manageable for full-time students and can overly fragment the learning experience.

Variations: Length of semester

• An alternative definition of a semester is 13 weeks teaching with 12 hours of class contact each week, with two weeks for revision and assessment with no class contact. This provides more time for reading and 36-40 hours of actual work for a full-time student. However, it means that the program is only in session for 50% of the year (26 weeks of the year), even though it is considered "full-time".
• Some institutions have 16-week semesters.
• Those that follow the schools sector have 20-week semesters.

Variations: School year

The traditional academic year has two semesters or three ten-week terms. Schools that run two semesters increasingly add a short ten-week term, sometimes called a summer quarter.

A few schools run three semesters each year, allowing foreign students to finish a three-year qualification in two years. The program is the same six-semester program. This can be highly attractive to foreign students who can save one year of away-from-home living costs, even though tuition costs are the same. It probably saves the institution money too, because they get more intensive use of facilities.