Number of hours required to develop a new course?

[hamburger]

Hi, when asked by the department the number of hours required to develop a new course, how should one respond? It is hard to predict the number of hours required but it is needed for contract creation.

[lightning]

Yes, it is very hard to predict how much time it actually takes to develop a new course. If there is $ being exchanged for the development of a new course, it is easier to think in terms of $ instead of hours. Me personally, I've been paid anywhere from $500 to $2,000 extra, to develop a brand new course from scratch, with the upper end being an online course. That's if I get paid anything extra, at all. Most of the time I didn't get paid anything. I was the one that actually taught the courses, so as is industry standard, it's just part of "prep."

In a more direct answer to your post, I would quote 40 hours, as a general answer for most courses.

[downer]

What does develop mean here?

I've written a course proposal in 2 hours, when copying and pasting large chunks from old course proposals and making a few edits.

Actually getting ready to teach a new unfamiliar course could take hundreds of hours.

For your purposes, just make up a number that is convenient.

[polly_mer]

For your purposes, just make up a number that is convenient.

And translates to enough money to probably be worth your time doing it.  If you don't want to develop the course, then give the answer of $10k, which is what course designers at big institutions tend to get.

If you want to develop the course, then $2-3k is probably the most you can get from your institution.

[Ruralguy]

I'd say that if you mean developing every lecture/discussion/activity from scratch, then at least 2 hrs per,I think, so could be 80 hrs, then assignments and course proposal and all can round that out to 100 hrs.  So, for most people with a totally new course, I think probably 100 is a better estimate than 40. But I do agree that you should probably just pick some reasonable number in that range and be done with that aspect of things.

[Cheerful]

Agree mostly with polly_mer and Ruralguy.

If this is about remuneration, don't minimize the value of your time and expertise.  Ask for as much as you can get.  Negotiate if possible.  Done right, preparing a new course typically takes months.

In general, don't be bashful when it comes to salary and other forms of compensation (e.g., course release time).  Usually, the worst that can happen is they say "no."

[lightning]

I like Polly_mer's quote of $10k for creating a "canned" course where anyone with minimum qualifications in the subject area, can drop in at the last minute and "teach" the course. I've never been paid that amount, but I've never been asked to create a canned course for others. I've only been asked to create new courses for myself with me as the instructor, and most of the time, I didn't get paid jack squat for the new course. Well, maybe I got "paid" in favorable reviews for my teaching when I went up for tenure & promotion, because curriculum development is one alternative way to receive high marks for teaching in a tenure/promotion bid--God knows I wouldn't have wanted to submit student evals . . . . .

[hamburger]

Thanks. I am a part-timer paid only by the number of hours teaching in class. No pays for making assessments, marking papers, answering emails, dealing with endless emails from nasty students and those who ask for exceptions for skipping tests, assignments, etc.

They will create another contract for developing new course(s). I have to create lesson plan, course outline, PPT slides, assessments, rubric, etc. Yes, there are two cases. Case 1: Developing a completely new course.  Case 2: Developing a new course based on an existing one. I need to tell them the number of hours for each case. Too bad they don't offer a full time position even I will be developing multiple courses.   

[ciao_yall]

Thanks. I am a part-timer paid only by the number of hours teaching in class. No pays for making assessments, marking papers, answering emails, dealing with endless emails from nasty students and those who ask for exceptions for skipping tests, assignments, etc.

They will create another contract for developing new course(s). I have to create lesson plan, course outline, PPT slides, assessments, rubric, etc. Yes, there are two cases. Case 1: Developing a completely new course.  Case 2: Developing a new course based on an existing one. I need to tell them the number of hours for each case. Too bad they don't offer a full time position even I will be developing multiple courses.

How many hours is the course? If it's a standard 3 hour per week, 18 hour semester that's 54 hours. Multiply that by a reasonable teaching rate.

Whether it's a new or existing course outline, it's still a lot of work to set up the class.

[Caracal]

Thanks. I am a part-timer paid only by the number of hours teaching in class. No pays for making assessments, marking papers, answering emails, dealing with endless emails from nasty students and those who ask for exceptions for skipping tests, assignments, etc.

We've been over this before, but I don't see how it does much good to think of things this way. I'm not suggesting you're getting paid enough, but if you decide to teach a class, you have to do all the things involved in that. How they actually calculate hours is irrelevant, there isn't some version of teaching a college class where you don't have to grade things or answer emails.

Anyway, for what its worth, maybe things are different in the humanities, but essentially every course I've ever taught, I've had to design it and I've created four totally brand new courses from scratch in 5 years and didn't get any extra pay from it, nor would that have been a reasonable expectation. This isn't really that out of the ordinary, so its sort of nice you even get paid at all for this...

[Aster]

When I worked for an academic study abroad company, I was paid $2500 to develop a new program.

I think I spent somewhere between 40-60 hours on it. It was a 3-credit hour course. That was about 15 years ago.

[pedanticromantic]

I think this can depend on how well you know the content as well. Last semester I taught a new course with fairly familiar stuff that is closely related to my field and it was fairly straightforward--probably 3 hours of prep for every hour of in-class time. This semester I've got a new course that isn't close to anything I've taught before, and I'm spending probably about 6 hours of prep for every hour of in-class time (yes, it's killing me!).

[hamburger]

Thanks. I am a part-timer paid only by the number of hours teaching in class. No pays for making assessments, marking papers, answering emails, dealing with endless emails from nasty students and those who ask for exceptions for skipping tests, assignments, etc.

They will create another contract for developing new course(s). I have to create lesson plan, course outline, PPT slides, assessments, rubric, etc. Yes, there are two cases. Case 1: Developing a completely new course.  Case 2: Developing a new course based on an existing one. I need to tell them the number of hours for each case. Too bad they don't offer a full time position even I will be developing multiple courses.

How many hours is the course? If it's a standard 3 hour per week, 18 hour semester that's 54 hours. Multiply that by a reasonable teaching rate.

Whether it's a new or existing course outline, it's still a lot of work to set up the class.

They did not say the total number of hours but it should be about 50-60 hours. I thought the rate should be the same as my teaching rate or higher. However, to my surprise, they told me that the rate for developing a course is 1/3 of my teaching rate which means I can use an hour of work to eat at a food court for no more than two times. I asked for 60 hours. Is that unreasonable? They told me to tell them how I spend that amount of time. I did. It has been a few days but there is no reply from them.

[polly_mer]

It looks like the employer is ripping you off again, Hamburger.

How's that job search going to get out of this situation?

[glowdart]

I've never been paid to develop a course, but like most of us in the humanities I do this all the time. Syllabus design can take 5-6 or 20-30 hours of reading selection, if you know the field well. I don't know what folks in textbook fields do. Assignments & lectures then require that you read you materials and conduct research and figure out how to pull it together. I can do this in 3-4 hours for a 75 minute class session, assuming I have no existing notes, but so sometimes it will take a lot longer.