Dive Brief:
- Online courses may be more time consuming for educators to teach, according to a new Australian study, which analyzed the responses of just over 2,000 academics, reports Times Higher Ed.
- The study found it takes educators 10 hours to plan a one-hour online lecture versus 8 hours for a traditional class, 6 hours to plan online tutorial versus 5 hours for an in-person one, and it takes around 100 hours to plan a new online unit, compared with 96 hours for an on-campus course.
- Of note, the study also found that there are no time differences between older, traditional academics and those that are younger and more tech savvy when it came to preparing online courses.
Dive Insight:
As the makeup of the student body becomes increasingly non-traditional with adult learners and people from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, the flexibility of online course options will become even more in-demand. While administrators often see online classes as reducing faculty time and opening up their abilities to do more research, it's important to consider that preparation for these courses may actually negate those intended benefits. Accordingly, to ensure that faculty members are not overwhelmed by their workloads and still have time to deliver effective campus courses, accommodations must be made for professors who are also teaching online classes. And, administrators should recognize that just because a course might be taught online, it doesn't mean capacity can be doubled — as, professors still have to interact with students and grade papers.
