We’ve assembled some related to student workload management, course design ideas, and teaching techniques, that can help instructors maximize how much students can realistically learn in your courses.

The workload management materials presented on this page include concepts from multiple disciplines and offer tools for estimating and understanding what students are able to do, the time they take to complete tasks, and ways to approach course design to ensure that objectives, assignments, and content are aligned.

In the workload tab below under “Resources,” you'll find insights into what constitutes a manageable workload for students and how to design modules and courses where students can learn the material and skills they need without feeling like they're facing down a firehose. The insights in this tab help us to understand the skill level and abilities college students meet us with and help us to focus on realistic expectations for student output during a term.

Considering the workload we assign in a semester might require us to focus more closely on aligning our assignments with our outcomes. The course and content design strategies tab offers ideas for ensuring that your course is built to truly meet your outcomes, and that there isn't anything extra standing in students' ways. Microlectures can help you focus on key takeaways; "uncoverage" provides an approach that shifts the course away from content delivery to skill development and content discovery; and backward design helps us to focus on what students should know, understand, and be able to do at the end of a course and build toward that.

The first two sections of this resource can be especially useful in condensed-format courses (i.e., 7-week semesters and intersessions). The condensed-term courses tab provides additional ways to plan to fit a traditional semester's worth of learning into a much shorter timeframe without simply doubling or tripling the work on students' plates over a shorter period of time.

Resources