Microtraining 2: Hours, Units, and Instructional Categories

Use this 10-minute activity to calibrate review of contact hours, outside-of-class hours, total student learning hours, instructional categories, and unit values.

Training Overview

Time

8–12 minutes during a regular AP&P meeting.

Purpose

Identify calculation problems without treating hours and units as a clerical exercise.

Output

A shared standard for deciding what technical review can flag and what faculty must resolve.

Hours-and-Units Standard

For AVC curriculum calculations, one semester unit represents 54 total student learning hours. The COR records hours for the course as a whole, not merely the weekly schedule.

Lecture

Typical ratio: 1 contact hour to 2 outside-of-class hours.

Activity

Typical ratio: 2 contact hours to 1 outside-of-class hour.

Laboratory

Typical ratio: 3 contact hours to 0 outside-of-class hours.

Review principle: The instructional category must describe the actual learning activity. Do not relabel hours merely to make the unit calculation work.

Committee Activity

Proposed Course

Course: Introduction to Environmental Sampling

Proposed units: 4 semester units

Lecture contact hours: 54

Laboratory contact hours: 54

Outside-of-class hours: 54

Total student learning hours: 162

How many units do the listed hours support?
What appears inconsistent?
What can technical review identify?
What decision must return to discipline faculty?

Example Debrief

How many units do the listed hours support?

Three units. The calculation is 162 total student learning hours ÷ 54 hours per unit = 3 units.

What appears inconsistent?

The proposed four-unit value does not match the listed total hours. In addition, 54 lecture contact hours would typically be paired with 108 outside-of-class hours. The listed 54 outside hours do not reflect the normal lecture expectation.

What can technical review identify?

Technical review can flag the arithmetic mismatch, confirm the locally approved divisor, identify the instructional categories, and ask the originator to reconcile the hours, units, assignments, and workload.

What must discipline faculty decide?

Faculty must determine the intended academic design. They may document the additional outside-of-class work needed for four units, reduce the unit value, revise the contact-hour structure, or reconsider the instructional categories. Technical review should not invent workload or redesign the course.

One-Minute Closing Standard

AVC review standard: Hours, units, assignments, and instructional categories must describe the same course design. A mathematically correct total is not sufficient when the categories or workload do not reflect what students will actually do.

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