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Re: How much is too much?



Tina Fanetti wrote:

This is a 5 hour class that meets for 6 hours, 2 of which are lab.

Wow. That completely changes the calculation of "how much
is too much". You should tell them on Day One, perhaps in
a written handout, that for practical purposes they've signed
up for two courses. They'll have to do two courses' worth
of reading and two courses' worth of homework and two courses'
worth of term papers. That's only fair, since they're getting
two courses' worth of credit. Five hours is 1/3rd of a normal
full-time course load. So they can expect to spend 1/3rd of
their time between now and January on this course. That's
six hours in class and nine hours out-of-class, per week.

I would imagine the time budget is something like
lab: 2 in-class, 3 out-of-class
lecture: 3 in-class, 6 out-of-class
with some slight borrowing back-and-forth, and some useful
synergy. The lab-course syllabus is harmonized with the
lecture-course syllabus, I hope??

[see also following note on multi-step reasoning]