Work Load (March 28, 2009)

A topic similar to Teaching Load is work load. Work load is determined by the courses that you are assigned to teach, as well as the discipline in which you teach.

Since the College of Business at Idaho State University has a 3-3 load (meaning that you teach three courses per semester) that is the scenario that I will discuss. If you have a three-course-per-semester load, the most difficult situation is when you are assigned to teach three different courses each semester. That means that you have to prepare lectures, exams, homework assignments, etc. for three individual classes. A professor always hopes to get at least two out of three courses that are the same. (The last time I was that lucky was Fall 2005, although I'm scheduled for only two preps in the Fall lf 2009. Yippee!)

I suppose one variable that makes it even harder is when you have never before taught one or more of the courses. If you have taught a course before then you have to bring lecture materials up to date and modify tests, etc., but at least you have materials on which to build. If you've never taught the course before then the best you can hope for is that another professor has taught the course before, that they have done a good job organizing the course and preparing materials for it, and that they are willing to share those materials with you. Generally I'm too picky to use materials prepared by other professors, although I've borrowed course content from a former colleague who is now at Bowling Green University, Joe Chao.

The worst case scenario is when a course has never been taught before. It requires a huge amount of time to develop materials for a totally new course. I think I've noted in other posting that I've developed several new courses at ISU, most recently CIS 12o, Interactive Web Development. It generally takes several iterations to get a course the way you want it, and you have to be willing to listen to feedback from your students without getting defensive.

A more sensitive subject is the discipline in which you teach. Let's face it, some disciplines never change. Think about the courses that you have taken. Some of the material in those courses hasn't changed in decades. I'm not saying that that makes teaching those courses a breeze, but it would sure cut out about 75% of my workload if I never had to update my lecture materials and assignments. I had a management professor at Saint Louis University tell me that he is so glad that he doesn't have to teach IS, because he prepared his lecture notes when he first graduated from college and he hasn't had to update them since! Holy cow!

However, since I have taught courses in both Computer Science and Computer Information Systems, the material covered by my courses changes on a regular basis. As new technologies become available, and as software changes, the courses have to change. For example, one of the items on my to-do list is to modify CIS 220 so that the programming language used in the course is C# instead of VB.Net. A few semesters ago I had to convert the database course from using Microsoft Access to using SQL Server, since by using SQL Server we could cover topics like stored procedures and triggers. So even though these courses are not considered to be a new prep, they may as well be. Faculty don't make course changes because we crave new work and less time with our families, but because doing so makes our students better prepared for the workforce.

Speaking of programming courses, some courses are a LOT harder to teach than other courses. Programming courses are associated with a higher workload per class due to the complexity of assignments, increased student assistance needs, and complexity of exams. Each assignment not only has to be carefully and explicitly written but also has to be completed by the professor before it is posted to (a) insure that the specifications don’t require something that is impossible or unreasonably hard, and to (b) provide students with a demo program upon which to base their solution. Assignment specifications must be very detailed to insure that students gain experience with the course topics that the assignment is intended to reinforce. There are many more student questions in programming courses, and students require a great deal of assistance and out-of-class time. Exams are harder to develop than in most classes because exams over programming concepts require longer to write, solutions must be coded before the exam is administered to insure that questions are reasonable, and often grading requires the student solutions are also tested in a program to insure that they work correctly. Programming classes, when taught conscientiously, require excessive amounts of time. In 2008 I taught three different programming courses both semesters. No wonder I haven't updated this blog in a long time!

That's enough for now. If I haven't yet discussed how a professor determines course content I'll address that sometime. And I'll talk about the difference between CIS and CIS.

I'd love to hear your comments. Just keep them clean and not too insulting.