TUNTREET
How much time should one spend on studying? Aleksander Mæland Munkejord Translator Caroline Lensjø-Alvin Journalist Emma Andrea Sørensen Photographer
900 hours of work each semester sounds like a lot, even to the most diligent student. Tuntreet met with Pro-principal Solve Sæbø to gain a better understand of the reasoning behind the nominal workload.
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Issue 02 Year 75
How is the nominal workload determined? In our study regulations there is a specified number of expected working hours per credit. Expected workload per year is 60 credits, and each credit takes about 30 hours. That gives us 1800 working hours per year, which we can divide by the students’ number of working weeks. This workload is a little below what a typical employer would expect, but students don’t work for that many weeks throughout the year. Are we expected to work during weekends and holidays? We do not expect students to work at any particular times, but rather that they are interested in doing what is needed to succeed in the courses. Whether a student works 15 or 40 hours per week depends largely on the student, their study skills and motivation. We cannot regulate this, but we’ve got to have a paragraph determining a nominal workload so that we don’t impose an unreasonable workload on our students. We should rather focus on ensuring high quality tuition, good descriptions of the courses and that our learning activities give efficient and proper learning for as many students as possible. Taking this spring parallel as an example, the nominated workload is slightly above 11 hours per day, excluding weekends and holidays. What are your thoughts on this? I do not expect a student to work 11 hours every day. That sounds excessive, and I can’t demand that. I hope the students live a life outside of their studies and that they regulate this themselves. We offer organized learning activities and a lot of independent studies, and I’m sure that how much work each student puts in varies a lot. But from my own studies, I remember working approximately an ordinary work week, and the majority finished on time.
