One of the most educationally significant requirements of the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) is the standardization of educational offerings in terms of notional learning hours and credits. According to SAQA,

Notional hours are not 'real' hours. They are an informed estimate of the average time an average learner, entering with the correct level of assumed knowledge would take to master the specific outcomes of a Unit Standard. Time here refers to the time spent on the learning, including assignments, home study, etc. - not just the time in direct tuition (contact time).

SAQA accepts a credit system on the basis of one credit equalling 10 notional hours of learning, motivated in context in each case. A one-year full-time equivalent course is assumed to be 120 credits or 1200 notional learning hours. These requirements are significant because they force providers to think about courses and programmes from learners' point of view - that is, from the point of view of what it is possible for a learner to do in the time available. Traditionally, course developers have considered the demands of the subject and what they would like to teach, rather than what it is possible and desirable for learners to learn.

For developers of distance education courses, however, SAQA's 'notional learning hours' is a familiar concept. When learners are studying at a distance, it becomes imperative to consider the amount of work that they are able to do in addition to the demands of their occupation and personal life. If you do not calculate learner workload you run the risk of overwhelming your learners and making them drop out or develop shallow strategies simply to get through the content.

SAIDE recently worked with developers of two distance programmes (an M.Phil. in Maternal and Child Health at the University of Cape Town, and the Resource-Based Learning Career Preparation Programme at the University of the Free State) in an attempt to answer this question in these two specific contexts. What follows is a step-by-step account of an approach that evolved with these two programmes to estimate learner workload. All the estimations are made on the basis of the admittedly fictional 'average' learner. The only way to get a sense of reality about your actual learners is to test your estimates against actual experience (see Step Seven).

Step One
Decide how many hours you expect your learners to work every week and how many weeks you will have in your year.

The starting point is SAQA's definition of notional learning hours and the assumptions about the amount of time that an average learner could spend on a full time course in a single year. The calculation of 1 200 notional learning hours a year is based on local and international research, which indicates that an average learner in a full-time educational programme can be expected to study for forty hours per week during an academic year that is assumed to be thirty weeks long.

A learner doing a distance education course, however, cannot be expected to spend simply half the time of a full time learner, as allowance needs to be made for travelling, extra time at work, and for personal affairs. On the other hand, learners at a distance can be expected to put in more weeks of study than full time students.

At the Open University in the United Kingdom (UKOU), learners are assumed to have an upper limit of fourteen hours available for study each week, for thirty-two weeks of the year, excluding time spent on attending tutorial sessions or preparing for and sitting examinations. Therefore, if one includes all time spent on the course (including the study leave that learners usually get during examination time), the likelihood is that an average distance learner will complete a programme in twice the time taken by an average full-time learner, i.e. 600 hours.

Step Two
Calculate the planned time for each module on your programme.(See Figure 1)

Do this in terms of:

•    number of weeks in the year allocated to this module;
•    number of notional hours in total allocated to this module;
•    additional hours required in certain weeks of the year for activities such as intensive contact sessions or practicals;
•    time spent on preparing for and writing examinations (or examination equivalent assessment, such as orals, dissertations, or projects).

Step Three
Do some research about how to work out learner workload in terms of printed material.

Study the estimates of time learners spend on studying printed material (that is not simply reading the material, but making an effort to comprehend and retain) outlined in Figure 2. Note that these estimates are all based on learners whose home language is the same as the language of the printed material. Further references to study on this subject are:

•     Rowntree, 1997, Making Materials-Based Learning Work, London: Kogan Page
•    Chambers, Ellie, 1994, 'Assessing Learner Workload', in Lockwood, F. Materials Production in Open and Distance Learning, London: Paul Chapman.

Step Four
Estimate the amount of study reading time required for a given module.

If you are expecting learners to work through a set of readings or a textbook as well as a learning guide, you will have to make separate calculations and add them together.

1. Estimate how many words your learners are being expected to read in a given module

•    average number of words per page
•    plus number of pages
•    equals total number of words

2. Judge whether the reading is easy, difficult, or moderate
Choose one of the words per minute estimates (40 w.p.m. to 100 w.p.m.)

3. Calculate the number of minutes and hours of study reading

- Divide total number of words by estimate of words per minute read by learners
- equals total minutes
- divided by 60
- equals no. of hours.

4. Estimate and add on the time needed for each in-text activity.

Step Five
Work out the time required for each module in the programme, considering not only reading time, but time spent on all activities contributing to learning.

An example of what was worked out for a typical module in the M.Phil. (Maternal and Child Health) is represented in Figure 3. This is a good example, because there is a healthy balance between the amount of reading material and the amount of time devoted to interacting with the material in a variety of ways. In addition to the individual module activities listed below, learners attend three one- or two-week residential sessions, and complete a dissertation.

Step Six
Add it all together and see if it is reasonable.

Put together the time demands of all the modules in the programme, the time spent on intensive residential sessions, and on examinations or exam equivalent assessment, and see if your demands are reasonable in terms of the amount of work that distance learners could reasonably be expected to do in the time available.

Step Seven
Check workload via developmental testing and evaluation.

The Resource-Based Learning Career Preparation Programme of the University of the Free State is planning some research into how much time learners actually spend on a given course or module. Each course coordinator is required to indicate various components of the course on a time log (including class or contact time, preparing for class, reviewing class work, preparing assignments, reading RBL material, reading prescribed texts, doing activities, listening to audio-tapes, and other activities). Learners are requested to fill in the amount of time they spend on each component of the course during a given week.

This exercise is repeated twice at different times of the year (once as examinations approach and once at a less stressful time). In this programme, there are scheduled contact sessions every week, so the variables are the time students put into reading, working with the RBL material, studying, and so forth. Figure 4 is an example of the type of instrument prepared is the following:

Step Eight
Use the estimates you have made about learner workload to help students plan their study schedule.

The Education Courses of the Further Diploma in Education Programmes at the University of the Witwatersrand do this very effectively. A sample of one of the introductory pages from their course materials is reprinted with permission in the shaded block below.

PLANNING YOUR STUDY

The materials are designed for 6-7 hours of study a week, including activities and assignments. You will not be able to manage the course on less time than this, and depending on your pace of study you may need more.The course writers have indicated expected times in the course materials. These reflect the time it may take you to:
•     read the materials critically;
•     go back to previous sections where necessary;
•     think carefully about what you are reading;
•     work with your study-partner where necessary;
•     do the activities and assignments, which will sometimes involve time with colleagues and pupils in your school and classroom.

The table on the next page provides a guide to pace yourself through the course. It is only a guide, and your own studies will vary, according to your pace of work and your own circumstances. You may take longer on some parts of the materials and shorter on others. However, if you consistently take much longer than expected, you should contact a tutor for help. If you consistently taker much shorter than expected, you should think about whether you are studying thoroughly enough.