[NSWI004] Time management

[Petr Tůma]

Hello,

> I made some calculations based on your data. We are recommended to
> attend 30 credits per semester. It makes from 750 - 900 work hours
> per 14 weeks and thou from 53.5 to  64.3 hours per week. It renders
> students to work 13 hours a weekday or 9 hours a day weekend
> included. Since the standard and healthy work time in this country is
> 40 hours a week, I conclude that your expectation is 60% above the
> capabilities of the average student.
> 
> For me, this calculation renders my study and work time consumption
> to 10 hours a day weekends included. Plus work on my Bachelor thesis
> which is not included in my credits yet.

if you have an issue with the standard ECTS credits requirements, I recommend you take it up with the European Commission, which set the requirements as a part of their Bologna Process, see for example https://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/education/ects/users-guide/key-features_en.htm.

I quote: "The correspondence of the full-time workload of an academic year to 60 credits is often formalised by national legal provisions. In most cases, workload ranges from 1,500 to 1,800 hours for an academic year, which means that one credit corresponds to 25 to 30 hours of work. It should be recognised that this represents the typical workload and that for individual students the actual time to achieve the learning outcomes will vary."

Obviously, these are requirements I cannot generally influence. However, we do monitor the student workload in our course carefully. Few facts:

- Last year (when we used pretty much the same set of assignments as we plan to do this year), 81% of the students have completed the course, which I guess would be slightly above average for a major course in the bachelors program (for comparison, NAIL062 Logic 74% completion rate, NTIN071 Automata 76%, NMAI059 Probability 88%, NDBI025 Databases 72% ...). That indicates that students handle the workload about as well or slightly better than they do other lectures.

- We are very careful to be upfront about the timing requirements and the deadlines, providing sufficient opportunities for self assessment so that should a student struggle, we can discover the problem early and provide remedies, such as additional consultations during the labs. We do not leave problems for the exam period (which students generally find helpful because they have enough work preparing for exams for all the other courses).

- We are extremely flexible with timing. We already have four slots for the labs and we have introduced a system where students can come to any slot with any issue they have, we are also available for consultation on the mailing list, and we do not mandate participation in the lectures. All our assignments have deadlines at least two weeks long, sometimes longer, and we allow for later submissions with some point penalty. This makes it much easier to structure your course work around other duties you might have.

I am quite sorry to hear that you perceive our requirements above the capabilities of the average student. In light of the above facts, I suggest this might be a somewhat exaggerated position based on quite incomplete picture of how the course proceeds. At the same time, I do not deny that the course will take some of your time (as explained in my previous mail, this really depends on your background and skills and partially on luck in your team), and my experience is that work should be started early, rather than left to the last day before the deadline.

Finally, I should point out that - although I find your working alongside school commendable - we cannot really be responsible for your time management when juggling both school and a job, and I find it quite strange that you would come to me complaining about 70 hour working weeks when you take up two full time responsibilities (I assume your job is also full time, as is school).

Hope this helps, Petr