18 days

[downer]

I've agreed to teach an asynchronous online 3-credit course that lasts 18 days, which includes a federal holiday and 2 weekends.

I'm not really asking for advice. I know how to do it. I expect quite a few students won't keep up. I will give them plenty of warning before the first day of class about what they are in for. I will probably open up the LMS before the first day so those who want to can get an early start.

I've taught 3-credit courses over a period of about 24 days previously. 18 days is definitely the shortest one I will have taught.

Can you beat 18 days?

[dismalist]

Yeah, 15 days, frequently, on-site though. Hard for the kids to learn anything. Administrations kid themselves putting on such a schedule.

I did it 'cause I needed the cash. When circumstances changed and got a real job, I stopped! :-)

[downer]

Yeah, my incentives are 1 money 2 having something to occupy me during a likely lockdown period 3 enjoying the interactions with the students. Will the students learn anything? Basically, that's not my problem.

[dr_codex]

I've done 5-week courses, 4 days/wk. So, 20 days. Way too compressed, but barely doable.

My students want to take 3-week winter courses. Partly to catch up, partly to fill the COVID time. By credit hour, that should be 45 hours/week (15 hours instruction and 30 homework). I have my doubts that they will be getting this amount of instruction, or putting in those hours.

I don't deny that one could construct an intense, immersive experience in 3 weeks. Many study abroad courses are this length, and lots of intensive workshops are even shorter.

Good luck!

[Vkw10]

16 days. Class sessions on three Friday evenings, three Saturdays, two Sundays. It was a cohort program, where they had class three consecutive weekends, a weekend off, then next course. Students did ten courses a year and worked full-time. They started a new cohort 3-4 times a year. I taught the same class for five cohorts, swearing I'd make a six-month emergency fund a priority so I'd never have to do it again.

[Parasaurolophus]

I can't beat it, but one of my colleagues has somehow managed to wangle her way into a courseload that includes two 14-day summer courses.

(She's an old hand, and has had them forever. I don't mean to imply that the wangling is new!)


Nicely done, though. I think these are a good deal.

[Puget]

The people who schedule such courses (I'm not blaming faculty who teach them at all!) obviously know (or care) nothing about human attention, learning, and memory.

Hmm, maybe I should teach an 18 day course on cognitive science for administrators?

[mamselle]

A two week (so, 10 days) summer course on the liturgical arts at a local seminary.

Three hours per day with a paper/project due at the end.

Much wailing ensued when I clarified that they did indeed need to know the 20 art history examples, 10 music examples, 5 film clips of theatrical performances and 5 dance clips.

I think they thought it was going to be an "easy A" but they ended up working fairly hard--and most of them ended up liking it. A couple in particular in the assessments told me they were mad the second day but appreciated what we'd done by the end of the class.

Taught it two years in a row--same structure each time--just before I went back to do my own grad work.

I lived (figuratively) in the office where my other job was on campus for the rest of the day each day in between, prepping for the next day's class after a two-hour lunch break, because a lot of the things (like setting up slides, cueing music and film clips, etc., couldn't then be done in advance (before YouTube, for example...)

M.

[polly_mer]

Are you going to meet the time requirements as dr_codex explained them or are you going to rip off your students?

I taught an accelerated course (4 weeks with daily meetings and all the work standard for a semester-long, 4 credit course) once and swore never again.  That was nowhere near enough money and that was a course I had all prepped.

[sinenomine]

In my adjunct life, I taught in a program where the classes met for six days.

[downer]

In my adjunct life, I taught in a program where the classes met for six days.

Wouldn't that mean the students were meant to be working about 15 hours a day on the course? Presumably they did not do that.

[kiana]

I took a couple of classes in 3-week semesters. We met 3 hrs/day for psychology and statistics and 5 hrs/day for calculus (that was a bit of a trip). I know for the calculus class and the stats class we did every assignment and test that the 15-week semester students did.

[apl68]

Seems like not so long ago on the "Bang Head" thread or "Favorite E-Mails" thread there was some talk about students wanting to take abbreviated courses in hopes that it would let them get the same credit for less work, and finding out that it didn't work that way.

I never taught an abbreviated course.  It must be a nightmare for the teacher.  Especially the grading.

[bio-nonymous]

I have never taught a course like that, but I did take a winter break course in grad school that was 5 days long: 9 hours per day, 8am-5pm  (1 hour off for lunch), essentially 6 lecture hours and 2 lab hours each day, and worth 2 credits. It was a highly focused course with people motivated to learn the topic, but it was a lot of information in a short period of time--also, however, it was pass/fail.

[fishbrains]

I've taught 3-week courses using pretty-much the formula Dr. Codex gives. I had to give "the speech" on day one to put everyone on the same page about the complete inflexibility of the course:

• You MUST attend every day. Late work will NOT be accepted. You MUST ask questions when you have them.
• You can NOT get sick, have someone die, take a day or two off, go on vacation, have work issues, etc.
• You MUST come ready to work and ready to discuss the material every day, and you MUST work all three hours in-class (we will not get out early) and you MUST work probably 2-3-4-5 hours at home every night outside of class.
• It's okay to be sick of everyone by the end of the week, but you still have to be nice to people.

The classes have always gone fairly well, with the normal craptacular flame-outs of some slackers and/or students who had life happen to them at the wrong time.

As others have noted: Not easy money, but quick money.