This little e-book looks at the question: "What is a reasonable workload for a full-time lecturer in a higher education environment?"
About staff
Usually only one staff member teaches and assesses a unit. Other staff are only involved for monitoring and moderation purposes. However, if the unit uses more than one staff member, one person should be the person in charge of the unit. Several other possible scenarios are:
A coordinator (who does not teach) arranges a series of instructors to teach and assess various parts of the unit. Guest speakers may supplement them.
Teachers and assessors are different people.
A lecturer is responsible for the unit. He/she gives the lectures and conducts assessment, and supervises the tutor, who runs tutorials. In reality, however, the tutor's job may range from little more than discussion group leader to the main teaching load of the unit.
This creates lots of opportunities to fudge:
The lecturer may dip out completely and leave everything to the tutor.
The college may ride on the credentials of the lecturer but use the tutor to teach.
The college may ride on guest speakers for credibility and teaching.
The coordinator may inadvertently let things fall between the gaps.
Guest speakers need not be inducted teaching staff members with qualifications, as they are not accountable for the unit. Coordinators should be at least inducted administration staff, but preferably inducted teaching staff members with qualifications because they are responsible for the unit.
What's normal?
The full normal load for a traditional campus higher education instructor of undergraduates is 12 class hours per week during semesters, which is a little less than many full-time students do.
This varies for some kinds of teaching that have a lower teaching load and more time in supervising practice sessions, such as language teaching and laboratory work.
Besides the actual class work, the instructor's role also includes doing their own preparation (including updating their teaching and assessment materials, assessing (e.g. marking), giving routine extra support for their own students, and
completing administrative requirements for the units they teach.
As part of their duties, they are also normally required to:
participate in campus community life,
attend the regular staff meeting,
teach short courses outside semesters, such as short quarters,
play a role in the college’s public relations (although this varies greatly according to gifting),
gain any required teaching qualification relating to their teaching role (e.g. M.A.T., Grad. Dip. Ed. H.E., Cert IV TAA), and
participate in professional development. In the higher education sector, this often means writing journal articles and attending conferences in their field of expertise.
They are entitled to four weeks annual holiday, and time off at the end of each semester for marking. In many cases, they are subject to an award, which may differ from the above, depending on time and location.
Not many staff get tenure or paid sabbaticals anymore.
Other factors
Other circumstances can impact staff workloads, creating variations from the norm. Most of these relate to tasks other than teaching:
Are they doing further studies (e.g. PhDs) with the approval of the college? If so, how is time allocated for study?
Have they been assigned funded research projects? (Unfunded research projects are more like a personal projects or PD. They need not otherwise be considered, because their unfunded nature implies that no time is allocated for them.)
Have they been assigned textbook writing? If so, they should have funded time for it.
Are they pastoring churches? If so, are they really still full-time staff?
Do they have other administrative roles? Principalship is usually the major reason for reduction of teaching hours, especially if the principal is also head of administration. Other specialist roles (academic dean, facilities, dean of students, etc.) seldom justify reduced class hours in a smaller college where everybody wears more than one hat.
Are they teaching a unit for the first time? This usually requires increased preparation time, especially if it is a relatively unfamiliar field.
Are they teaching all familiar units? Their preparation load is quite light, and it may be legitimate to assign them more units.
Are they supervising research projects? Policies vary.
Some so-called research universities consider a full teaching load to be principal supervisor to 10 or 12 Ph.D. students. This assumes that staff are also heavily involved in funded research themselves.
The so-called teaching universities treat research supervision as a privilege and don’t allow any extra time or pay for it.
Are they supervising practicum students? The rationale for variations is much like that for supervising research.
The matter of temperament also affects staff workloads:
Some kinds of added tasks are real work but people don’t get credit for doing them when they should.
Most people feel that they are working hard even if they aren’t.
People dedicate extra time to things they really want to do. The cause might be either a lack of personal discipline or a poor match between gifting and job description.
People skimp on things they need to do but don’t like.
Other models
Other models of education often involve very different formulations.
Geographical spread
When classes are scattered over a wide geographical area, a college might need more staff for the same number of equivalent full time students. Staff spend more time in traveling, often do much of the administration for each site, and class numbers are more likely to fluctuate widely. Geographical distance is a risk factor, so everybody needs to work harder at communicating.
On the other hand, it might be more efficient. Teachers prepare only once for several locations, and the proportion of face-to-face time with students is usually lower than teaching on campus. In some cases, student numbers might be consistently higher, and the system can be more ecomomical if it saves buying a campus.
At another level, the activities are more likely to be different. The approach often includes individual mentoring and coaching, and senior, competent students might take on some teaching duties as part of their studies. (By way of comparison, campuses sometimes use graduate teaching assistants as cheap or free labour to teach undergraduates when they do not have sufficient qualifications to do so.)
Online courses
On-line education and distance education are quite different from campus education.
Program delivery of a large program requires the following kinds of staff roles:
Program administrators
Admissions officers handle queries and admissions, and verify identity and pre-requisite qualifications.
Instructors (also known as facilitators) teach, coach, mentor, evaluate or otherwise help students to learn.
HelpDesk staff handle general inquiries from students and prospective students. When problems are too difficult, these staff refer them to admin, mediators, or technical staff.
Mediators handle complaints.
Technical staff keep hardware and software working
Inspectors look for possible improvements and compliance with applicable policies and regulations. They also evaluate the performance of processes and participants for various purposes (parental, employers, personal, private, public, etc.)
Development of online courses is a complex process. Depending on the range of options, it can involve the following roles:
Project managers manage the whole course development process. This includes writing the course proposal and getting it approved, overseeing the team, complying with timefame, complying with budget, etc.)
Two subject matter experts per study area write materials, answer content queries, and check accuracy.
Tutors give feedback on how students have responded to different kinds of approaches.
Course researchers find existing web resources, gather, analyze, and present new information. (Finding good materials on the web is a bigger job than it appears.)
Instructional designer plans and writes lessons.
Text editors proofread and check content, accuracy, presentation, etc. of text materials for publishing.
Video production for video and interactive TV:
Presenters
Videographers
Tech support: sound and lighting
Video editors.
Graphic designers make sure web appearance is attractive and functional.
Test supervisors oversee field-testing of new materials with real students. (Often the same person as the instructional designer)
Programmers for software development
Staff payment models
Staff may be paid in one of several ways, some of which are basically the same, but might vary according to circumstance. They generally fall into two categories:
The college offers a low-risk low-profit package to an instructor on a commission basis for the number of students. The instructor carries the risk of low student numbers to gain the prospect of higher profit from higher student numbers. This is almost a franchising arrangement, whereby the teacher gets paid more for teaching more students, but takes the risk of poor pay if there are few students. This follows some government funding models that work on a per-student hour basis.
In this model, staff may have their own company and act as contractors. This gives them some tax advantages, but they incur more of their own costs (e.g. worker's compensation).
The other models of payment are based on a per-cohort system, giving the same payment to the instructor based on the amount of time regardless of the student numbers:
A full-time load. Full-time staff carry a the same number of units as a full-time student, and pick up on all related duties outside staff time. It may follow an award. For the college, this is actually a fairly high-risk option because it requires the college to commit to a salary regardless of the number of students. Then again, if the college has a full student contingent, the college could make higher profit.
Staff are paid per unit (e.g. per semester hour. This rate makes skills-based units more affordable to teach.
Staff are paid per teaching day (e.g. six hours) The daily rate is easier to administer and often also easier to schedule.
Staff are paid per hour for each class contact hour. The hourly rate is necessary for casual part-time staff, and must be high enough to recognize any work that they must do outside class (e.g preparation, grading papers). This tends be be a lower risk to the institution than a full-time load because the institution can at least cut staff hours if student numbers are so low that classes must be cancelled.
One particular model is usually considered unethical and is sometimes illegal. When instructors are paid only for students who pass the unit, it is unfair on everybody. If the institution admits weak students, instructors are under undue pressure to give extra tutoring to get students through. If the instructor is also the assessor, the instructor is tempted to pass weak students who should not have passed. These factors compound. If the institution admits weak students and the instructor is also the assessor, then instructor is under undue pressure to pass as many students as possible.