Variations in Class Hours

[downer]

This semester I had an evening class that met 15 times. Next semester it is scheduled to meet 13 times. There's been no policy change as far as I know. I think it is due to the college being closed on the day that the class meets on a couple of weeks. But I thought that classes were meant to meet the same number of hours each semester, so I'm a bit confused. Not that I'm complaining.

[polly_mer]

I don't know that classes have to meet the same number of hours every term.  I do know that a minimum number of classroom hours are supposed to be met per US Department of Education guidelines on work required per credit awarded in a given term.  That's why accreditors look very carefully at accelerated terms and how much work was assigned to be comparable to a full semester/quarter.

Someone may not have done the math to ensure the minimum is met for every class.  Someone may have done the math and decided it was too much trouble to figure out how to get another class meeting for the handful of classes affected and decided that if the accreditors check, then a different someone will be on the hook for making the appropriate apologies and implementing the lessons learned process to ensure it never happens again.

[RatGuy]

OP, I once taught a class 6pm-915pm on Monday nights. Classes start on a Wed. I met once, then off for Labor Day. Exams for night classes are held during Dead Week. Contact hours were way below SACS requirements, but since the class catered to military and other non-traditional students, the Provost just shrugged when he learned about it.

[marshwiggle]

Here they're pretty careful to make the exact number of hours for a course, with one caveat. In the fall, my course is "1.5 hour" lectures on Tuesday and Thursday, and in Winter it was "1 hour" lectures MWF. However, since those times are subject to 10 minutes travel time, then 1.5 hours=80 minutes and 1 hour=50 minutes, so in the fall there are 160 minutes per week and winter has 150 minutes per week. Over the term, 10 minutes less each week adds up.

[Puget]

We deal with this by having a handful of days each semester that run on a different day's schedule (so a random Tuesday is a Monday course schedule etc.). I have a dread of messing one of those up, but by the grace of calendar reminders have not done so yet.

[apostrophe]

This semester I had an evening class that met 15 times. Next semester it is scheduled to meet 13 times. There's been no policy change as far as I know. I think it is due to the college being closed on the day that the class meets on a couple of weeks. But I thought that classes were meant to meet the same number of hours each semester, so I'm a bit confused. Not that I'm complaining.

I've had this very thing happen.

[nescafe]

I taught a once-weekly seminar last quarter that met seven times total (it was on a Monday). I ended up assigning essays to be completed in weeks we couldn't meet, but it still meant I went 2 weeks without seeing my students during the term!

[Hegemony]

I think in many cases both profs and students would consider those shorter classes win-win...

[clean]

In the fall it is likely that Tuesdays met too many days.  With Labor day and then the Thanksgiving break, Tuesdays never got a day off.
To solve it, and accommodate the 'reading day', the last Tuesday night class is a 'Thursday'.  If you meet 2 days a week on Tuesday/Thursday it doesnt matter, but Tuesday only classes dont meet the last Tuesday so that the Thursday only classes can get there last day in. 

I am employed by one member of a state university system. there are many campuses but about the only thing we truly have in common are the Board of Regents and the health care plan.  Our admin was always off from the other members of our system (until just a few years ago).  We either started a week before everyone else, or ended a week after everyone else.  We taught 2 extra weeks a year, which adds up over a career to a lot of unpaid time!  Yet we were still expected to do just as much research and service when our people went up for tenure before the Board of Regents!  By the time you go up for tenure, you've worked an extra semester!

When this was brought to the Provost's attention in the Faculty Senate, the ultimate response was that "The other schools are calculating their contact hours wrong"... So in the whole army, Everyone ELSE was Out of Step - we were the ones marching correctly.

I agree that different length classes is a problem, especially when one term you meet 15 times and the next you meet only 13 times.  What do you cut out?