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Work-load and the quality of student

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Ellie Chambers
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To cite this article: Ellie Chambers (1992): Work-load and the quality of student learning, Studies in
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Studies in Higher Education

Volume 17, No. 2, 1992

141

Work-load and the Quality of

Student Learning
ELLIE CHAMBERS

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The Open University

ABS'rgAC'; For many undergraduates, the amount of work they are asked or expected to do is
among the most crucial factors affecting their engagement with a course of study. Yet student
work-load is a neglected issue, in research literature as in practice among teachers in higher
education. In the context of increasing concern among educationists about the quality of
students" learning, and some discussion of recent research findings, it is argued that 'reasonable
work-load' is a pre-condition of good studying and learning. Some of the ways in which workload can be measured are discussed and, in particular, the methodological difficulties involved
in relying on students' perceptions of it. A more rigorous method of calculating student workload, in advance of course presentation, is outlined. Arguments and evidence are drawn largely
from studies of adult part-time students of the arts and humanities at the Open University
(OU), but are applicable more widely in higher education. Suggestions are offered about how
student work-load can be regulated and some implications of this for curriculum and course
design, as well as for the quality of student learning, are presented.

Introduction
Teachers in higher education have traditionally seen themselves as subject experts and, as
such, their main responsibilities have been to determine undergraduate curricula and to
ensure that students meet the required standards of performance. How students interpret the
requirements of a curriculum, with regard to how much of it should be covered and in what
depth, is often left largely up to them. Only secondarily have teachers concerned themselves
with students' ability to make judgements of this kind, with the level of their 'study skills' or,
more broadly, with the processes of their learning. Rather, the assumption has been that
those who succeed in winning a place in an institution of higher education can be relied upon
to have acquired such abilities, along with a good grounding in the discipline concerned.
However, teachers in the Open University (OU) have never been able to make such
assumptions about their students. This has forced them to look carefully at what adult parttime students are expected to do to acquire a degree, and at ways in which they can be taught
the 'how' (and 'why') alongside the 'what' of study. In the process, OU researchers have
found that work-load is among the most important course-related factors that account for
student drop-out (Woodley & Padett, 1983). It seems likely that conventional students also
suffer as a result of overloaded courses, and that excessive work-load has deleterious effects
on all students.
What those effects might be and how we might set about regulating student work-load
are the issues I propose to address here, in the context of a higher education system that is

142 E. Chambers
undergoing radical transformation. As a consequence of widening access to the system (DES,
1987), and discussion of such issues as 'equal opportunities', 'modutarisation of courses' and
'transfer of credit', it is likely that teachers in higher education generally will have to
undertake some re-examination of their curricula and teaching methods, as well as to modify
traditional assumptions about their students. This paper is offered in the belief that these
teachers will find an account of OU experience relevant and helpful, as well as timely. I start
with a brief discussion of some recent research into student learning, which provides a
context for and has an important bearing on these issues.

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Research into Student Learning

Probably because the role of teachers in higher education has been that of subject expert and
custodian of educational standards, an assumption that has largely gone unchallenged, much
research into student learning has focused on different teaching methods (inputs) and their
effectiveness judged in terms of students' performances (outputs) (Entwistle & Ramsden,
1983, Chapter 1). Little attention is paid to what happens in between, or to processes of
students' learning and to factors (such as work-load) that affect the quality of those
processes. Such issues tend to emerge only in research into learning processes themselves
and, moreover, only when that research takes into account students' perceptions of teaching.
For example, when Marsh (1977) undertook a comprehensive review of research into
teaching which was based on student evaluation, work-load emerged as one of nine
dimensions of teacher effectiveness the students identified. And work-toad features as a
factor in the Course Perceptions Questionnaire used by researchers at Lancaster university to
gauge students' views of their courses, which was itself derived from interviews with
students. A summary of all this research reveals that students themselves believe they are
taught most effectively (that is, they learn best) when what they are taught is perceived as
interesting and relevant, is presented in a weU-organised, clear and coherent way, openly and
with enthusiasm, is assessed appropriately, and when there is not to much of it (Entwistle &
Tait, 1990).
The Lancaster group also investigated different approaches students might take to
learning, by means of an Approaches to Studying Inventory. Its development was most
influenced by the work of the Gothenburg researchers under Ference Marton. Previously,
Marton (1976) and his team had developed a conceptual distinction between deep and
surface approaches to learning (respectively, learning motivated by the desire to understand
and characterised by an enquiring, critical stance, as opposed to a more passive approach,
motivated by the desire to complete tasks, and characterised by lack of reflection, memorisation and reproduction of largely unrelated facts and ideas for assessment purposes).
Through their more quantitative inventory studies the Lancaster group endorsed and
extended this conceptual framework: they identified meaning, reproducing and achieving
orientations to study, characterised respectively by deep, surface and strategic approaches to
learning (Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983; Ramsden, 1988). At the same time researchers at the
OU had begun to explore the application of Marton's ideas to the approaches taken to
learning by adult part-time students (Morgan et al., 1982).
The belief that lies behind all this work is that quality of learning is profoundly affected
by the approach to learning that a student takes, and that this in turn is affected by, among
other things, quality of teaching and forms of assessment. By using the Approaches to Study
Inventory alongside the Course Perceptions Questionnaire the Lancaster researchers were able
to correlate approaches to learning with perceptions of teaching, and with performance in
tests and exams, and so investigate the nature and extent of these relationships. Their work

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Work-load and Student Learning 143

supported the Swedish research in finding that a meaning orientation and deep approach to
learning correlate with deeper understanding, personal satisfaction, and good performance as
measured in tests and exams. Conversely, they concluded that "unfavourable attitudes to
studying, lack of interest and, significantly, surface approaches, were related by students to
deficiencies in the assessment s y s t e m . . . , restricted opportunities for self-direction and
excessive workload" (Entwistle & Ramsden, 1983, p. 171).
So far, then, we have on the one hand some consensus about what constitutes good
teaching (including interest to students, relevance of content and, significantly, reasonable
work-load). On the other, we have a framework within which to identify and analyse
students' approaches to learning (with evidence to suggest that a deep approach constitutes
good, successful learning and that, among other things, excessive workload is related to a
surface approach to learning). Discussion has tended to revolve around the precise nature of
the relationship between the two: whether good or poor teaching practices can be said to
cause students to adopt a deep or surface approach to their learning.
Marton argued that a surface approach to learning is relatively easily induced in
students, but that the degree to which quality of teaching can be said to encourage students
to adopt a deep approach is less easy to establish (Marton & Saljo 1976). Nevertheless, he
believes that the 'natural' approach to learning is a deep one; that an approach to leaming
should not be seen as characteristic of a student, but as a response to a situation, a view
which is supported by some research carried out at Surrey University (Laurillard, 1979). On
such a view as that, when teachers overload students they might be said to cause their
students to take a surface approach to learning. But Entwistle & Ramsden (1983) are more
equivocal: "It is nevertheless possible to maintain that while students are influenced by the
demands of learning tasks and their contexts, they might also have relatively stable
preferences for one approach or another" (p. 159). On this view it looks as if'approaches to
learning' come closer to defining student 'types', suggesting that, whatever the context,
teaching practices can only influence the quality of learning to some limited degree.
In more recent studies, Entwistle & Tait (1990) have again noted a correspondence
between "feeling overloaded and using memorising without understanding", and between
poor performance and "attributing difficulty in exams to an over-demanding course and to
bad teaching". They conclude that their interpretation of such findings is "bedevilled by the
lack of evidence of causality" (p. 183). Are we to interpret the fact that students who take a
surface approach to learning most often perceive courses as having a heavy work-load, and
this as a cause of poor performance, as a further defining feature of a reproducing orientation:
that is, these students perceive the work-load as heavy because they are not attempting to
distinguish between matters of central and marginal significance, for example, but are trying
to commit everything to memory? Or, conversely, should we take it that among other things
a heavy work-load 'forces' students to take a surface approach to learning and is indeed
responsible for poor performance in exams? In so far as Entwistle & Tait reach a conclusion,
it seems to be that if enough students agree that a course is overloaded then we can take it
that the latter interpretation is the correct one (pp. 189-190).
This is a puzzling conclusion. For if, as they say, not only are "students with these
contrasting conceptions of learning.., likely to define 'good teaching' in different ways" (p.
189)--a finding that is supported by Prosser & Trigwell (1990)--but they also perceive
work-load differently, then we cannot expect simply to sum a group of students' perceptions
of work-load (or any other aspect of teaching and learning) in order to reach some general,
more 'objective' conclusions about it. And in the absence of well-grounded conclusions about
such matters, the scope for making recommendations for change, or taking action, as
researchers or teachers, must be rather restricted.

144

E. Chambers

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Positioning and Defining 'Student Work-load'

As we have just seen~ present lines of research do not seem to be yielding conclusive
evidence, or even very fruitful lines of enquiry, about the nature of the relationship between
teaching and learning in higher education~ crucial though they have been in focusing our
attention on students and the processes and quality of their learning. So some shift of
perspective may well be helpful. Perhaps we could agree that at least teachers can aim to
create the conditions for their students in which good learning is possible. Indeed Hirst &
Peters (1979) argue that they must try to do so if what they do is to count as 'teaching' at
all. The authors identify three logically necessary conditions for central cases of 'teaching':
that activities (1) "must be conducted with the intention of bringing about learning."; (2)
"they must indicate or exhibit what is to be learnt"; and (3) "they must do this in a way
which is intelligible to, and within the capacities of, the learners" (p. 81). The last of these
conditions particularly concerns us here; as Hirst & Peters argue, it is the extent to which
teachers explicitly address themselves to it that distinguishes good teaching from bad.
In this context, I take it we might agree that in order to learn well students must
(logically must) have sufficient time to devote to their studies. After all, to take the
argument to its logical conclusion, if they have no time at all then discussion about what
might constitute good learning is simply irrelevant. So we can say that when teachers
overburden students, demanding more work of them than they have time to do, they create
conditions in which what is to be learned is likely to be unintelligible, and in which students
cannot possibly learn well. But, as we saw, it is on the contrary the teacher's aim to foster
good learning, to encourage students to take a meaning orientation and deep approach to
their studies (to take an 'enquiring, critical stance' etc.). According to Ramsden (1988), this
means that students must take the time to "focus on what is signified..., relate and
distinguish new ideas and previous knowledge, relate concepts to everyday experience, relate
and distinguish evidence and argument, organise and structure content" (p. 19). While this
account is helpful, it does not perhaps take us far enough: we need to try to tease out its
implications from the point of view of the student attempting to learn, in order to bring
aspects of the teacher's role in the process into sharper focus.
In particular, it seems that Ramsden wishes to emphasise the importance of students'
understanding of what is being taught, in relation to their current knowledge as well as the
teacher's intentions ("focus on what is signified..., relate and distinguish...' etc.). This is
consistent with students taking an 'enquiring stance' towards what they are studying. For
example, in the humanities such a view would focus attention on a range of interpretive
activities students might engage in when reading texts: working on a text by categorising,
classifying, drawing inferences, and predicting, in order to understand the relationships
between concepts and to make the text make sense.
However, taking a 'critical stance' also implies the need to engage in activities like
considering and weighing up different arguments and points of view; drawing conclusions,
and making judgements. Activities such as these presuppose some ability to distance oneself
from a text and some awareness of different (theoretical) standpoints from which judgements might be made. If we regard the 'subjects' that students of the humanities study as
networks o f discourse about aspects of the world, of human experience and its expression,
then we can posit the process of a higher education as one in which students increasingly
become engaged in such discourses. Since these discourses have a past as well as a present
'reality', engagement in them involves the recognition that, historically, particular kinds of
discourse are characteristic of different domains of study and of disciplines, involving
distinctive text genres, concepts, methodologies, and tests for 'truth'. And it means recognis-

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145

ing that these discourses are always open to re-interpretation and revision. Real engagement,
then, means coming to understand what applications of theory, uses of evidence, and forms
of argument are particular, relevant and appropriate to an academic domain, and it involves
increasingly skilful participation in the discourses concerned, as one finds one's own "voice'
within them.
Conceived of in this way, academic study at higher levels is necessarily abstract and
complex. It involves considerably more than Ramsden implies by 'relat(ing) concepts to
everyday experience', for instance. In order to learn well students will need help from
teachers, not only to read 'texts' appropriately and so on, but also to construct frameworks
for understanding what they read, for making meaning. They also need help to begin to see
how a particular discourse is constructed if they are themselves to become active speakers
and writers of it: in other words, they will need help to gain a perspective on what they are
studying, why and how they are studying it, and a concern for processes of learning
themselves. The latter, metacomprehension, also gives students a feel for their own strengths
and weaknesses as students, helping them to organise themselves and their study, and to
cope with competing and burdensome demands.
Deep learning, conceived of in this way, has many implications for teaching. In
particular, it implies that teachers may actually need to restrict the scope of a curriculum,
especially in the early stages of students' careers, in order to make the time and provide
incentives for them to behave appropriately: to think; go back over things; work towards the
broader frame and context from and within which to make their own meanings (individually
and in group settings); experiment with their writing; and come to understand how
important it is that they begin to find their own 'voice' within these discourses. If students
do not have time to do these things, if they are always driven on by the demands of the
curriculum, we leave them little choice but to skim along on the 'surface' of things, merely
echoing their teachers' voices. That is to say, 'having sufficient time' to do the work required
should be seen as a pre-condition of good learning, rather than just one among many
conditions in which it may flourish: teachers should be taking the issue of 'student workload' correspondingly seriously. So we must now ask, how much time is 'sufficient' for good
learning in higher education: or, from a teacher's point of view, how much work should we
be asking students to do given that 'good learning' is our aim?

(i) How Can We Know How Long Students Spend Studying?

It seems sensible to begin by trying to find out what goes on in practice; how long students
actually spend studying. In order to acquire this information we may ask students to say in
retrospect how many hours they have spent studying a course, or aspects of it. This was in
fact the approach taken by McKay and other researchers in their survey of student workload at the University of Canterbury (McKay, 1978). Or we may ask them to keep a work
log in which, following each work session, they record the number of hours spent studying.
This approach was adopted towards the Hale Report (University Grants Committee, 1964),
which sought to establish the hours worked by full-time undergraduates in England each
week. In either case, students may also be asked to record their perception of work-load in a
given period, rating it on a scale between 'very heavy' and 'very light' or 'far too much' work
and 'far too little'.
Each method of gathering information has its difficulties. In the first case, and with
regard to work-load ratings, we are relying to a greater or lesser extent on students'
perceptions of work-load. It seems that students' perception, the degree to which they feel
overburdened, is affected by both the extent of their interest in a topic or task and by how

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E. Chambers

difficult they find the work, and that these two variables are themselves related (Chambers,
1984). It is not easy to analyse this complicated set of relationships satisfactorily, but my
own work suggests a close relationship between perceptions of work-load and perceptions of
difficulty: that is, it takes much longer to work on course material if the subject matter, as
presented, is experienced as difficult (Chambers, 1976). In general, when students (especially beginning students) find parts of a course very difficult they do not usually find them
very interesting, and they also complain about feeling anxious and overburdened (Chambers
et al., 1989).
We might expect things to be more straightforward if we rely on students to keep a
record of the hours they work immediately following each work session. However, we know
that most people are not very reliable record-keepers. Also, this difficulty may be compounded by the fact that there are problems surrounding what students actually define as
'work': many music students, for example, do not count all or even any of the time they
spend listening to music as time spent working, just as literature students often regard
novel-reading as 'a pleasure' (Chambers et al., 1977). On the other hand, far from
underestimating the time they spend working, even OU students (who study entirely
voluntarily and usually pay for their own courses) may well feel under some pressure to say,
when asked, that they have worked what they imagine their teachers will regard as
respectable hours, and so present a rather creative account of it.
Another problem is that 'work-load' seems to be a catch-all for a number of stresses
students feet. For example, when students suffer interruptions to their studies, as a result of
illness, family difficulties or whatever, their anxiety is often expressed as a feeling of
overburden. And researchers at the OU have found that students tend to regard themselves
as having a heavier work-load the greater the number of separate sources of information or
reference they are asked to consult in a given period. No doubt it does take time to locate
and use a wide range of source material, but it is also clear from students' comments that a
large part of the difficulty is simultaneously trying to hold in mind the purpose or point of
their enquiries, and keep track of the way an argument or line of thought is developing, and
of what hangs on it, while they do so (Chambers & Pearson, 1988). In these cases it is clear
that, when students reported 'heavy work-load', work-load alone was not at the root of their
difficulties.
In view of these methodological problems, we might conclude that it is extremely
difficult to determine with any accuracy how long students actually spend studying, whether
we rely on their retrospective assessments of the time spent, on their perceptions of workload, or on work-load logs kept concurrently. Instead, we might look to institutions of higher
education to provide guide-lines about their requirements or expectations regarding student
work-load.

(ii) How Long Should Students Spend Studying?

The Open University does in fact make guide-lines of this kind public, but I am not aware
that conventional universities and polytechnics commonly do. The OU based its work-load
calculations on research into the hours worked by full-time undergraduates in England each
week (as presented in the Hale Report), by Scottish undergraduates taking the Ordinary
degree, and by part-time undergraduates at Birkbeck College, University of London
(Blacklock, 1976), which emerged as around 40 hours per week during term time. Part-time
students at the OU are thus expected to work for 14 hours per week, in each of 32 weeks
over a 6 year period, in order to acquire an Ordinary degree.
The figure of 40 hours' work per week during term time, for full-time undergraduates

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taking a 3-year Honours degree, is supported by McKay in his account of research done at
the University of Canterbury. There researchers found that on average students spent
around half this time on private study, which is taken to include the completion of tasks
arising from formal classwork, and for assessment, as well as "learning and reinforcing ideas,
developing interests" (McKay, 1978, p. 93). While "the time spent in formal classes differed
between arts and sciences (about 14 and 20 hours a w e e k . . . ) the total study time stayed
about the same" (p. 89). Time spent in class declined between the first and third years of
study but, again, the total study time stayed at around 40 hours per week.
This kind of stipulation glosses over the question of the hours students might actually
spend studying, given that individuals can, and do, give very variable amounts of time to it.
And anyway, as I have argued, what students say about the time they spend studying is not
reliable. But, if we can agree that 40 hours per week during terms is a reasonable minimum
for full-time students to spend studying in order to get a degree, then in principle it is
possible to work out that 'amount of work X ' cannot possibly be done, even very badly,
within a given time period. In order to make such a calculation in practice, we would also
have to be able to calculate how long it would take the 'average' student to complete the
range of studying and learning tasks involved, a matter to which we will return.
But if this can be done satisfactorily then, because we have an objective measure (of 40
hours' work per week, or whatever amount we could agree upon), we will actually be in a
position to tell whether and when we are overloading students. We wilt also be in a position
to begin thinking about how best the time can be spent. As ever with questions involving a
scarce resource, we need to know how much of it there is before qualitative judgements of
that kind can be made. It is surely the absence of pressure on teachers to make such realistic
assessments that has allowed certain practices to develop within higher education generally,
and allows them to continue.
Consider the widespread practice of handing out lengthy reading lists to students at the
start of a course; lists which may contain no guidance as to the ground covered by particular
items, no indication of their relative importance, nor of the orientation of particular authors.
We might expect students to be unsure about what they are supposed to do with a list of this
kind, apart from reading some (or all?) of the items. And it is certainly not clear how they
could decide which items to read if they are given no information on which to base their
decisions. They may also wonder whether they should be taking notes and, if so, to what
end, in what detail... ?
Even so, such a practice might be defended on the grounds that teachers are simply
sketching out the territory and that it is understood that students will make selections. On
this view, if students are falling behind with their work they can always take short cuts
through the course, spending more time on the parts they judge to be crucial or find
particularly interesting, and vice versa.
Indeed, in a strong version of the argument, offering students a wide choice of material
and requiring them to use their intelligence and initiative as they go about their studies is
seen as a positive virtue, helping them to develop the ability to discriminate and work
independently. While these may be worthy aims, on the reasonable assumption that students
opt to study a particular subject or course because they are to a greater or lesser degree
ignorant of it, what intellectual grounds could there be for making such selections in advance
of studying it? And to whom can a conventional student turn for guidance if, as is often the
case, course designer and tutor/assessor are one and the same person or group of people? In
such circumstances the effect of this practice may be actually to encourage in students a
surface approach to their learning, an approach which we saw is relatively easily induced.
One suspects that those who advocate such a policy of'laissezfaire' are holding in mind

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E. Chambers

an idealised picture of the average student, a model that is in fact based on themselves and
people like them (the very small minority of undergraduates who go on to become
academics). Or they are so far removed from the difficulties students face, and the doubts
they experience, that they have simply forogtten about them. Or, they are disingenuous;
exponents, perhaps, of the kind of academic machismo in which the quality of a course is
equated with its breadth and complexity.
What remains to be seen, then, is whether we can make a reasonably accurate
assessment of how long it will take the 'average' student to complete a range of studying and
learning tasks, in a manner that is consistent with the deep approach to learning characterised earlier (taking an 'enquiring, critical stance' and all that that implied), rather than the
more perfunctory one just outlined. If we can, we will be in a position to examine the
implications of this, in the context of a 40 hour working week, for our ability to find a more
objective measure of student work-load and to be able to make predictions about it in
advance of course presentation.

Regulating Student Work-load

Let us suppose that, as teachers, we are planning a new course of study for our, as yet
unknown, students. In order to see whether students can reasonably be expected to
accomplish the work involved, given a 40 hour working week, we need to be able to predict
how long it will take the 'average' student to complete all the activities required by the
proposed curriculum: for example, in the arts/humanities, attending lectures and seminars
and doing associated preparatory and follow-up work; reading set books, anthologies, readers
and recommended texts; listening to music, examining documents, maps, architectural plans,
paintings and such like; doing written and other assignments, practical work, and so forth.
(Teachers in other domains will want to make appropriate substitutions for these activities.)
My work with OU course teams, over a number of years and across a range of humanities
disciplines, suggests that if several difficulties are taken into account in such a process,
workable methods can be developed. Indeed, the methods described in what follows are now
accepted as standard practice within OU arts faculty course teams.
Starting with the study of texts of all kinds, clearly the method has to be sophisticated
enough to take account of the relative density and difficulty, as well as the length, of the
range of written material students will study. And it must also allow for the time students
need to spend thinking while reading, re-reading, making notes, examining illustrations in
texts, and such like. Questions about the relative difficulty of a range of texts are of course
matters of judgement rather than fact. This means that when groups of teachers are involved
in making such judgements they must attempt to reach agreement through negotiation.
(Once a course is under way, teachers of conventional students can of course revise their
judgements and make the necessary adjustments to the curriculum relatively easily).
But when it comes to how long it will take the average student to study a particular text
we can turn for guidance to the application of experimental work done at the OU into
"reading speeds in relation to comprehension" (Lockwood et al., 1988, based on research by
Whalley, 1982). This suggests that we may make our calculations on the following rule-ofthumb basis: (i) an easy read = 100 words per minute (wpm); (ii) a fairly straightforward
t e x t = 7 0 wpm; and (iii) a dense/difficult t e x t = 4 0 wpm. Because these calculations are of
reading in relation to comprehension they should be regarded as 'study times' or rates, rather
than simply as reading speeds. As such, they encompass some 'time for thinking' and other
interpretive activities, for note taking and a fair amount of re-reading, and they are based on

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149

the assumption that the material will be unfamiliar to students who are anyway relatively
unskilled readers.
However, there is always plenty of scope for argument about which rate to apply in
particular cases; and some disciplines present special problems. In the case of literary
studies, for example, it is unlikely that an 'academically credible' novel course could ever be
offered if study times for each novel were to be taken into account, even when calculated at
100 wpm. As regards philosophy, I have never yet come across a text that could reasonably
be counted at more than 40 wpm, which again might quite severely constrain the curriculum.
In all such cases, a compromise has to be made between what teachers regard it as necessary
to teach and how much time students can reasonably be expected to spend studying.
However, it is just inappropriate to use these rates to calculate study times for poems, music
scores, maps and other 'symbolic' texts which need particularly close reading, and interpretation. Here a judgement does have to be made about how long it will take the 'average'
student to study each one.
The question of how much time to allow for the completion of written and other
assignments also poses problems. On the one hand, we know that many students spend a
very long time on them, especially preparing essays, but on the other hand, at the OU we
have not been able to take this as the norm. If we did, the content of curricula and courses
would have to be so drastically reduced from present levels as to raise questions about their
validity. Many teachers would argue that to have treated a subject 'satisfactorily', or to have
taken 'a course' in it, it is necessary for a certain minimum amount or range of material to be
included (difficult though it may be to establish exactly what that is). In the case of
assignment writing, as with novel reading, students might be said to choose the extent to
which they 'overload' themselves.
Also, the 'study times' of 100, 70 and 40 wpm do incorporate quite a generous time
allowance for thinking and re-reading. Since many students read and study with assignments
in mind, we may assume that much of the preparation for an assignment (for example,
thinking, making notes) is being done as they go along and within the 'study time' already
accounted for. With this in mind, the OU arts faculty has been able to agree that around 6-7
hours (or, in weeks when assignments are due~ about half the students' study time) should be
'allowed' for the writing of an essay assignment of around 2000 words.
At this point it will be helpful to demonstrate how such calculations have worked out
in practice, and how similar methods can be applied across a range of course components,
by working through an example. The appendix presents the work-load calculation for a 4
week 'block' of an OU arts faculty interdisciplinary course (Chambers, 1989). Starting at
the top of the chart, the study period for which these calculations were made was a 4-week
'block' of the course, just because the curriculum happens to be divided up in that way. In
a conventional setting, similar calculations might be based on anything from a week's to a
term's work, or even longer, as appropriate. Since OU students are expected to spend 14
hours per week studying, the 'ideal' study time for the 4-week period is around 56 hours.
(In conventional institutions, where students study for 40 hours per week, the equivalent
'ideal' study time would therefore be 4 40 hours, or 160 hours.) Against this ideal study
time is set the actual time that we calculate students would have to spend working on all
the requirements of the proposed course during this period. The course components are
listed in the appendix (units, illustrations etc.), and a calculation of the study time
involved in each one is presented alongside. The total time involved appears at the bottom
right-hand corner of the chart. It shows that what should ideally take students around 56
hours to complete would actually take them around 69 hours as things stand (and more,
since--as question marks indicate--some of the course material was unavailable at the time

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150

E. Chambers

the calculations were made). The clear conclusion is that this block of the course is
overloaded.
A more detailed look at the calculation for each course component reveals how much
time students would need to spend on each aspect of the course. This degree of detail helps
members of the course team to decide whether they are happy about what it is they are
asking students to spend most time on (that is, helps them to make judgements about how
best students should spend their time), as well as suggesting where cuts in the proposed
curriculum might be made. The course components referred to in the chart are 'units' (or,
correspondence texts), which are roughly equivalent to lectures, seminars and tutorials in a
conventional system, along with associated set book and anthology readings, illustrations,
and television, radio and cassette programmes. (Teachers in conventional institutions will
want to make appropriate substitutions here.)
Calculation of the time needed to study units, set books and anthology readings is made
on the basis of the 'study times' for texts discussed above (100, 70 or 40 wpm), taking into
account their density and difficulty and the other qualifications made earlier about different
text genres. In the case of an anthology, each item has to be calculated separately (though only
the total time involved appears in the chart). 'Exercises' refers to the question-and-answer
style in which most OU units attempt to stimulate students into active engagement with the
correspondence text. An exercise may also involve reading chapters of a set book, as well as
making notes and answering questions about them. Calculating the time students need to
spend on this kind of exercise is particularly tricky, but the margin for error can be reduced by
taking any set book or anthology reading done in association with an exercise separately, and
calculating it on the basis of 'study times'. A judgement still has to be made about how long it
will take students to make notes, or whatever else is involved in the exercise, which has then to
be added to the reading time. Exercises are also set, in relation to television, radio and cassette
programmes, in broadcast notes and cassette booklets. If there is much doubt about how long
activities of this kind might take, and in the case of extended exercises and project work, at the
OU we often try out the task with a few representative students. Short of that, we must rely on
teachers' experience and the exercise of informed judgement.
The work-load calculation for this block of the course, and others covering the
remaining blocks, enabled the course team to consider changing the balance of the proposed
curriculum, and making certain cuts in course material, well before the course was due to be
presented to students. (This is particularly important in distance education, and whenever
self-study material is used, because the cost of producing courses is high. It is extremely
expensive to have to withdraw and revise course material once it is published.) But, because
students only ever experience the 'improved' course, it makes evidence of improvement to
students' learning through these means hard to come by. Anyway, the case for attempting to
calculate work-load in this way essentially rests on the argument that it must benefit
students. Arts faculty colleagues have certainly testified to the efficacy of the process from
their point of view, as curriculum designers and course writers.
The example I have given of this method of calculating student work-load refers to the
various components that go to make up a distance taught course. But I believe that in
principle the method is applicable to any course of study. It is as rigorous as it can be and
otherwise depends, as it must, on informed judgement and, in instances of team-work in the
planning of courses, on negotiation and agreement between teachers.

Some Implications of Regulating Student Work-load

I have argued that if students are to learn well, to engage in deep learning, then teachers

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Work-load and Student Learning 151

must ensure that the curriculum allows them to do so: they must ensure that time is allowed
for students actively to engage in academic discourses in the ways outlined earlier, rather
than being constantly driven by the need to complete a multitude of tasks as best they can.
As a result of calculating student work-load, teachers can justifiably expect their students to
take a serious approach to their studies and to accomplish what is asked of them: that is, they
can be sure that they have created the pre-condition for 'good learning' to take place. There
is of course nothing in all this to prevent teachers including 'extra' reading matter,
assignments, or whatever, in a course of study, as long as the status of these elements is
clear. And no-one would dream of discouraging students from spending as much time as
they want to on their studies. But, at least, when these requirements are communicated to
students they will have a correspondingly clear idea about what is expected of them.
Moreover, as teachers calculate the work-load implied by the curriculum they can, in
the process, see whether they are asking students to spend most time on activities that are
likely actually to encourage them to take a deep approach to their studies. That is, through
this process of work-load accounting, messages about the purposes and nature of learning
that are 'hidden' in the curriculum are uncovered and can be addressed. In practice, then,
detailed calculation of student work-load tends to produce a radical transformation in
processes of curriculum and course construction; it is not simply a technical matter, but is at
the heart of responsible course design. Without it, the teacher is in the position of an
architect who disdains measurement of a plot of land or quantification of building materials.
A building there will no doubt eventually be, but after much unnecessary labour and
squandering of materials; a building, moreover, of ramshackle proportions and doubtful
habitability. The fact that education is a relatively intangible process, and that 'clients' can
so easily be blamed for flaws in its design, should not allow its architects to escape their
professional responsibilities.
At best, a careful account of student work-load leads to the reorganisation of curricula
and to a reduction of their scope. In many academic domains, this will in any case be
overdue, given changing conceptions of the disciplines and the accretion of bodies of theory
and knowledge. And the need for such rethinking becomes all the more acute in the context
of accommodating new types of student within higher education. The most radical outcome
of all would be to create conditions for them in which genuine interest in and enthusiasm for
academic study might flourish.

Acknowledgements
The author wishes to acknowledge the contribution of OU arts faculty colleagues to her
research into student work-load, and the constructive suggestions of other OU colleagues,
Nicola Durbridge, Alistair Morgan, Andrew Northedge, Mary Thorpe, Alan Woodley and
Hossein Zand, and the editor of this journal and his (anonymous) readers, in the preparation
of the final version of this paper.

Correspondence: Ellie Chambers, Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University,

Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom.
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Appendix: A Work-load Chart for an Arts Faculty Course

BLOCK 4--4 weeks: 'ideal' study time=56 hours (at 14 hours per week)
UNITS: 40,000 words at 40 wpm
= 16 hrs 30 rains
ILLUSTRATIONS: total of approx. 90
=c.3 hrs
EXERCISES (excluding associated reading of
set books, antholoyg, etc.):
=c.7 hrs
SET BOOK reading:
K + M approx. 2000 words
= 3 0 mins
Faustus (including re-reading)
+ 4 hrs(?)
A N T H O L O G Y reading:
15 items at 70 wpm
7 items at 40 wpm
=approx. 22 hrs(?)
TELEVISION programmes: 3 at 25 mins each
= 1 hr 15mins
RADIO programmes: 2 at 20 mins each
= 4 0 mins
BROADCAST NOTES: at 15 mins per programme*
= 1 hr 15mins
CASSETTE TAPES
Tape 3 (theme)
Tape 5 (music), 30 mins 2
Tape 6/7 (drama), 1 hr 2
Tape 8 (literature)
Tape 9 (visual)

=30
= 1
= 2
= 15
= 10

mins
hr
hrs
mins?
rains?

BOOKLET
1 hr
?
?
20 rains?
20 mins?

=c.6 hrs
ASSIGNMENT
=c.6 hrs
TOTAL:
=c.69 hrs
('Ideal' study time
=c.56 hrs)
N.B. The block is very overloaded. Compare in particular the time students must spend
on the anthology items and the (relatively short time) to be spent on exercises.
*If exercises based on television and radio programmes are set in the Notes, this should be
revised upwards.