How much time do you spend prepping lecture materials?

[skeletales]

I use powerpoint and try to build activities, discussions etc with as much participation as possible. With the right class, discussion or activity can eat up a good amount of time, lessening the load.

However, there's a base amount of content to get through. I find typically that for each hour of class, I'm spending maybe 3-4 hours creating materials. That would be somewhere between 24-32 hours/wk just on prep. I try to prep as much as possible before semester starts, but I have to invariably change things anyway when classes start. I'm also incapable thus far (in my 4th year of teaching) of being satisfied enough with material not to spend a significant amount of time modifying it for each new section.

My question is, how much time do you typically spend creating lecture materials? As of the last year or so, I find that my work-life balance has gotten worse. I had to teach 3 new preps in the spring last year (after one new prep and one old in fall), and it made for a terrible soul crushing semester. While everyone I know could commiserate, I have the impression that some people don't spend nearly as much time as I do and still seem to do well.

In some cases I know this is down to long-lived expertise or strong presence. I've known professors who just talk for an hour and people love it. I feel that I have to be more clever with structuring materials because I don't have the most commanding presence, plus being a young female in my current situation works statistically against me. I know also that not everyone uses powerpoint. I think personally it makes delivering content easier but is more time consuming. I want to reduce my load and still deliver quality content. I'm just really at a loss for how to do this. I also don't know whether my situation is common or not. I think perhaps some of my tendencies are just bad in this profession, and I needlessly create more work for myself. I've considered transitioning out.

I'd be interested to hear about anyone's experiences. Do you spend a lot of time on planning? Have you found a way to maximize? Thanks in advance.

[ciao_yall]

I use powerpoint and try to build activities, discussions etc with as much participation as possible. With the right class, discussion or activity can eat up a good amount of time, lessening the load.

However, there's a base amount of content to get through. I find typically that for each hour of class, I'm spending maybe 3-4 hours creating materials. That would be somewhere between 24-32 hours/wk just on prep. I try to prep as much as possible before semester starts, but I have to invariably change things anyway when classes start. I'm also incapable thus far (in my 4th year of teaching) of being satisfied enough with material not to spend a significant amount of time modifying it for each new section.

My question is, how much time do you typically spend creating lecture materials? As of the last year or so, I find that my work-life balance has gotten worse. I had to teach 3 new preps in the spring last year (after one new prep and one old in fall), and it made for a terrible soul crushing semester. While everyone I know could commiserate, I have the impression that some people don't spend nearly as much time as I do and still seem to do well.

In some cases I know this is down to long-lived expertise or strong presence. I've known professors who just talk for an hour and people love it. I feel that I have to be more clever with structuring materials because I don't have the most commanding presence, plus being a young female in my current situation works statistically against me. I know also that not everyone uses powerpoint. I think personally it makes delivering content easier but is more time consuming. I want to reduce my load and still deliver quality content. I'm just really at a loss for how to do this. I also don't know whether my situation is common or not. I think perhaps some of my tendencies are just bad in this profession, and I needlessly create more work for myself. I've considered transitioning out.

I'd be interested to hear about anyone's experiences. Do you spend a lot of time on planning? Have you found a way to maximize? Thanks in advance.

My ppts were always skeletal frameworks of key points. The students had to read ahead and bring in real-life examples to discuss BEFORE CLASS. This meant they were prepared, and I could quickly scan their writeups to decide when to call on them for discussion. Made for a much livelier class.

And, group work. Case study, time to work on their class projects, etc. Prep was pretty straightforward.

[Hegemony]

Where you have to change is in not being satisfied with what you have prepared.  The preparation will necessarily take a lot of time the first time.  (Or you run out of time the first time around, and some classes are conducted on a wing and a prayer, so you prepare them more thoroughly the second time around.)  Once the material is there, unless it goes badly wrong, leave it the way it is. Put it away neatly after class, ready to take out again next year.  Every year you'll find some stuff that didn't work, so you change that — in as efficient a way as possible.  That way the course gets better every year, incrementally.  But continual redoing to make marginal improvements, or just to make it "fresh" — no no no.  That's just anxious busywork, or maybe it's a way of avoiding your research obligations.  But it's a sure way to a) not have published enough to get tenure b) insure that you will have no life outside of work.  Stop it.

[Parasaurolophus]

For new prep, one hour per article to read it, and another hour to powerpoint it. Two articles per three-hour week, so 4h/week for new preps, plus however long it takes to make assignments and grade them. Currently, Moodle autogrades most of it, so I spend another hour a week designing Moodle questions for new preps. Once it's been taught once, though, it's smooth sailing.

[downer]

In addition to the obvious factors of how familiar the topic is to me etc, it depends on how interested I am, how much I get paid and how much I like the students.

Sometimes it is 15 mins, sometimes 5 hours.

[Liquidambar]

Where you have to change is in not being satisfied with what you have prepared.  The preparation will necessarily take a lot of time the first time.  (Or you run out of time the first time around, and some classes are conducted on a wing and a prayer, so you prepare them more thoroughly the second time around.)  Once the material is there, unless it goes badly wrong, leave it the way it is. Put it away neatly after class, ready to take out again next year.  Every year you'll find some stuff that didn't work, so you change that — in as efficient a way as possible.  That way the course gets better every year, incrementally.  But continual redoing to make marginal improvements, or just to make it "fresh" — no no no.  That's just anxious busywork, or maybe it's a way of avoiding your research obligations.  But it's a sure way to a) not have published enough to get tenure b) insure that you will have no life outside of work.  Stop it.

This.  I tell my advisees that teaching is like a gas--it will expand to fill all available time.  Even the best class can be improved upon.  You need to decide where to draw the line so you don't spend all your time on your teaching prep.  The goal should be "good enough," not perfection.

[Caracal]

Certainly, I have spent four hours prepping one class. This usually happens if it is a subject, I know little about, and then I find the reading interesting and get more involved in it than I probably need to. However, as a baseline level of prep, that is way too high. That is especially true if you have three new preps! You just have to find some ways to triage and spend less time on everything.

In my experience, some stuff will always go wrong the first time you teach a class. You just never know how a lecture or an activity is actually going to work until you try it. It is tempting to just prep a ton because then, even if it goes wrong, you can tell yourself that it wasn't because you didn't work hard enough. However, after a certain point, the gains from more work really become pretty marginal. Sometimes it can help to just artificially limit the amount of time you're going to spend on something. If you teach at 1, just spend an hour in the morning doing the powerpoint for the lecture you wrote earlier. It won't be perfect, but it never will. I try to think of the first time I teach a class as an early stage of an ongoing process. Some things will work, some things won't, other things can be refined the next time you teach it.

[arty_]

Hegemony is always correct.

The first prep can indeed be a very time consuming slog, but it should be very easy after that.

The single best piece of advice I ever received about teaching preparation (and by extension, keeping sane in academia):

"Arty_, I notice that you spend much too much time preparing for your classes. Tell me, if you prepared 20% less, would your course be 20% worse?"
"Well, no."
"How about 50%?"

[mamselle]

That's probably good advice for those on the TT who will get the chance to repeat a course but it may be a place where the norms for adjuncts differ.

I do still have and will keep the materials I developed and got to use for repeated courses, but the certainty or a chance for a do-over is lower, and the need to appear "fresh off the mark" the first time higher if one is NNTT.

Not a complaint--I actually love preparing courses and doing class prep, usually--and the more varied, the better!

But it is a different mindset, and the stakes are higher if something doesn't go as well...and the chair decides to slip in to observe your class that day without prior notice....

M.

[Aster]

For me, this formula has been pretty reliable for me throughout the years.

Brand new (lecture) preps: ~14 hours of prep for every week's worth of classroom lecture

Regular preps: 40-60 minutes of prep for every week's worth of classroom lecture. Much of this includes content updating, presentation restructuring, weblink checks, etc.



I don't have any pattern for laboratory preps (either new or recurring). Laboratory courses are all over the place with preps.

[craftyprof]

My first year on the job, a colleague recommended being 80% prepared for class.  Over time, I've come to embrace the wisdom in this.  The classes where I know mostly - but not 100% - how I want things to go always end up being the classes with the most engaging discussions.

Teaching takes up all the time you give it (and a little more).  Getting 80% prepared for a new prep takes longer.  Probably 4 or 5 hours for every 3 hours of class time.  In subsequent years, it's less and less.

[marshwiggle]

For me, this formula has been pretty reliable for me throughout the years.

Brand new (lecture) preps: ~14 hours of prep for every week's worth of classroom lecture

That's amazingly close to the rule-of-thimb I came up with years ago about creating labs; 4x the actual lab period time to create it initially, then half as long (i.e. 2x) to revise it after it's been done once, and each subsequent revision takes half as long as the previous one until you reach a "steady state" of about 1/2 hour each time.

So, for a 3 hour lab, it takes about 12 hours to create, about 6 to revise it the first time, 3 the next, etc.

Regular preps: 40-60 minutes of prep for every week's worth of classroom lecture. Much of this includes content updating, presentation restructuring, weblink checks, etc.

I don't have any pattern for laboratory preps (either new or recurring). Laboratory courses are all over the place with preps.

Feel free to adopt my rule :)

[Caracal]

That's probably good advice for those on the TT who will get the chance to repeat a course but it may be a place where the norms for adjuncts differ.

I do still have and will keep the materials I developed and got to use for repeated courses, but the certainty or a chance for a do-over is lower, and the need to appear "fresh off the mark" the first time higher if one is NNTT.

Not a complaint--I actually love preparing courses and doing class prep, usually--and the more varied, the better!

But it is a different mindset, and the stakes are higher if something doesn't go as well...and the chair decides to slip in to observe your class that day without prior notice....

M.

Your chairs must have less to do with their time than mine. They also must have worse manners, but that's a different conversation. In my experience things are generally less high stakes as an adjunct than they are on the tenure track at a teaching school. Basically, you are expected to meet a minimum standard. For people on the TT it can be more complicated and if someone is judged to be "just ok," that might hurt them.

Also, the advice about not running yourself into the ground for diminishing returns is doubly true for adjuncts. I take pride in my work and I try to do a good job, but if someone decides that I'm not working hard enough for my peanuts, than I guess I'll go find something else to do.

[prof_beardo]

Not too much to be completely honest, but I'm at the point where I only have to make relatively small adjustments each semester since I more or less do the same classes over and over. I'll spent four hours per week on lecture prep per class (each class gets three hours a week).

I will dedicate a day's worth of solid work though before the semester starts to mapping out about half a semester's worth of lectures in terms of what I want the "direction" to be for the first half of class and then about 1/2 through, take another day to check in with that
"map" and see where adjustments need to get made. I learned a lot from a brief time teaching outside of higher ed in terms of plotting out a day hours at a time to make my time usage more efficient in the classroom and during office hours.

[pepsi_alum]

For new prep, one hour per article to read it, and another hour to powerpoint it. Two articles per three-hour week, so 4h/week for new preps, plus however long it takes to make assignments and grade them. Currently, Moodle autogrades most of it, so I spend another hour a week designing Moodle questions for new preps. Once it's been taught once, though, it's smooth sailing.

This is about my speed as well. If necessary, I can work a little faster with intro-level textbooks, but I prefer not to rush myself at all possible.  I find that the most consuming part of a new prep is not the lecture materials themselves as it is coming up with good assignment guidelines that interface with the material I'm teaching. This is especially true in upper-level classes. 

Like Prof_Beardo, once I've taught a class several times, I find that I can teach it with relatively little prep required each week.