How many study hours per page?

How many study hours per page?

by Under Dog -
Number of replies: 9

Hello,

I had a question pop up during the designing of our course.  We are creating a course that has a requirement of 24 hours of study time.  By that I mean that the material we provide must equate to 24 hours of the student's study time to read the material.

How can we equate that to a number of Word document pages with 1.5 spacing?  By that I mean how many Word doc pages at 1.5 spacing will we need to provide in order to get a 24 hour study time?

Any ideas would be appreciated!

Dave

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In reply to Under Dog

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Chris Collman -
Picture of Documentation writers
Hi Dave,
I went around the bend and back with this very question about 2 years ago, with similar concerns. It is a little off topic for the lesson module forum, but I am loose as a moderator. The answer is 106,000 printed words = 24 hours of instruction in my opinion.

First, this question is related to seat time in a classroom and has nothing to do with real academic measures. If I sit in your class and am asleep with my eyes open and pass your 8 , 10 minute quizzes and 60 minute final because I am a speed reader, what does 24 hours really mean? It means that I sat in your class for 24 hours and passed the exams and I slept through your breaks as well. I did not have to sit in your class to sleep but your authority said that is what I had to do to get my certificate.

Second, it is all about the numbers and trying to translate seat time into online course time. The Wikipedia Words per minute page is interesting from a concept point of view. Somebody says that a PowerPoint presentation usually is done at a verbal rate of 100 words per minute (not words on the page). Audio books are presented at 150 words per minute. I will add that someone with little English reading skills is probably reading at 0-50 words per minute, with the average American reading at 200-250 words per minute.

I do not think it matters about spacing and font size. Word can count the number of words, even characters.

It is all about justifying the numbers of apples equaling the number of orange moodles. 24 hours is 1440 minutes, less breaks and 10 minute quizzes and a 1 hour final brings you to 1060 seat time minutes. Using the PowerPoint reasonable comprehension rate (including slide transitions, pictures, etc) that means 106,000 words spoken is the number. People read slower on a computer monitor but I would keep that in my back pocket.

Do not go down the road of counting words at various reading speeds. In a face to face it is all about the spoken word. Just remember what Mark Twain said "It is all about the data", or was it "There are lies, damn lies and statistics" smile Pick your data sources carefully, to force the authority to have to research their own numbers.

Of course in Moodle you can force the user to stay in a Lesson X number of minutes before advancing, but what a waste of time.

Chris





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In reply to Chris Collman

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Chris,

As you know I easily get irritated with posts dealing with controling the time students spend studying online. So, thanks for answering that post with your usual common sense, thus saving me the embarassment of "flaming" the OP.wink

As regards statistics, my favorite quote is:

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

Aaron Levenstein

ATB

Joseph

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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Chris Collman -
Picture of Documentation writers
For a while I was standing on the soapbox we share, flaming away! It took me almost an hour to tone it down to "common sense" kind of biknii smile

It was hard not to fudge the numbers so it ended up 1050 minutes or 105,000 words. That being the multiple of the interesting numbers of 25 and 42. I figured some bean counting administrator would wonder why a 70 minute final. Then realize that I had set up a multiple to the "The answer to the Ultimate Question" as discovered by Deep Thought.

Maybe in our next flame, we can suggest that since time is so important, all students must read books on a Kindle that only changes pages at the authorized fixed rate.

It is a good question to look at every now and then. I suspect it has been asked in one form or another for 1000s of years in many cultural settings.

Chris
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In reply to Chris Collman

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Donna Trainer -
Please take pity on those of us who ask these "seat time" questions.

I'm a continuing education provider for professionals licensed by a state. The licensing board only cares about seat time. One credit equals one hour, period, end of story.

Last year I inquired about getting approval for a webinar. The licensing board insisted that I had to prove the attendees' butts were at their computer the whole time by periodically and randomly asking quiz questions. That isn't required at approved live seminars! In fact, I've seen attendees at these approved seminars playing with their mobile devices and laptops, coming and going at will, reading books...yet they still receive the credit.

I'm just getting my feet wet with Moodle, and I don't even know if the work I put into it will result in approval of my course. But the only way to have a shot at approval is if I do something to ensure the seat time to satisfy the powers-that-be.




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In reply to Donna Trainer

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Joseph Rézeau -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Hi Donna,

I do pity you and other colleagues in your situation. On the other hand, no-one is doomed to accept the inacceptable (or are we?), and I strongly believe that it is part of a teacher's job to "educate" those "powers-that-be" by demonstrating to them that their requirements are plain stupid. I do appreciate that this is easier said than done, that there are matters of authority, etc. but do try.

Take heart!

Joseph

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In reply to Donna Trainer

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Chris Collman -
Picture of Documentation writers
I feel your pain.

From a sales or enrollment perspective, one reason to use Moodle is added value to "seat time" course. Consider pre, current and post courses (I am using generic names for sake of example). The pre is a teaser, gives info about the seat course, maybe some quotes, reading list, quotes from students who love the seat course with the Moodle supplement. The current is available to students who enroll in your seat course and extends a few days after the course end. The current is more interactive and allows you to do things asynchronously. Here you have the pdf files, resources, links to the licensing board and other stuff, perhaps a chat or a couple of forums. You could have a quiz to prep your students for the final or what ever. The post is the real value added course. Here you put teasers to other courses but also lots of resources for your students who have taken the seat course.

People get really hung up on words. The Licensing Board types are fixated on "Credit Hours" instead of merely "Credits". A lot of people do not recognize a difference between exempt and non-exempt employees either. Oh well...neither of us will hold our breath.


Chris


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In reply to Donna Trainer

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Tiffany Morgan -
Continuing education, professional development, military and government-all use this method, which is unfortunate. I remember many times trying to calculate the conversion of stand up instruction hours to computer-based instruction seat time hours, and it never seemed right, nor valid.

These type of institutions want a "nice, objective measurement"...IMO, this isn't it (if one actually exists at all)
</rant>
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In reply to Donna Trainer

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Bernard Boucher -
Hi Donna, Dave and others too wink

it is an old debate wink

A typical discussion about it with some funny parts.

A more recent one but with code only for Moodle 1.6.1 ;-(

Another discussion with many alternatives.

If I were forced to do so here is my plan:

1- Use the lesson module.
2- Divide the text in many small parts
3- Present one part in the lesson.
4- Ask a dummy question about a detail in the part.
5- Using lesson navigation control, lock the reading of next part without the right answer.
6- repeat 3-5 as required.

7- Use moodle log and the small hack I present in referenced post to estimate online time.

8- Adjust the size of the small parts and the Idle time of the hack to reflect the real reading time of someone trying to do the reading seriously.

Combining these you should obtain something like :

.

where blue indicate estimated school time, red estimated outside school time and the total estimated school ( Cegep 342:20 hours ) online time and estimated total outside ( EXT 88:49 )

It is sure that some students will try to only answer the detail questions without reading the text!

At the end your boss will have an antipedagogical, boring, automatic and tunable reading estimating time tool!

Please note that I don't use that to evaluate my student by time but to adjust the size of the activities done by my students. Sometime I create an activity for 3 hours but the report tell me the time of each students. I use it as a feedback to adjust activity size/time. At the end of a semester it is good to see how long take the 45 hours of laboratory or if the 2 hours for the final exam are ok for the students!


I hope it may help even if it is old stuff!

Salutations from Québec,

Bernard
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In reply to Joseph Rézeau

Re: How many study hours per page?

by Stuart Mealor -
Just beautiful - my favourite quote of the year smile
- thanks Joseph/Aaron!

Like most others here I find it difficult to equate amount of time to quality of learning in any meaningful way other than within the context of a timed quiz (and even that has it's problems!)

Stu.
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