CSM Student and staff handbook

2.3 How much work is involved?

At school or college your working day was highly structured and your time was organised for you. At university you will find you have fewer contact hours with staff and that you have to organise your own working day. You may have a timetable with only a few hours of lectures on it in any one week, and you may find yourself wondering what you are supposed to do with the rest of your time. The answer is simple – you should be undertaking independent study. But how do you know how much work you should be doing?

The University has a rough guide to how many hours you should be putting in on your work. It is based on a ratio of hours to credit weighting. For each credit you should be doing about 10 hours of work, where work includes time spent in lectures, practicals, fieldwork or seminars with a member of staff (otherwise known as contact hours), examinations, plus independent study time working on assignments, consolidating your lecture notes (based on wider reading) or preparing for examinations. A 15 credit module works out roughly like this:

15 credits = 150 hours total study

So, if you were timetabled for 4 hours per week of contact time in lectures and practicals for 10 weeks of term, that would be a total of 40 hours.

That would leave 110 hours of independent study. If you allowed 20 hours for revision outside of these 10 term weeks (Vacation and/or revision week etc), that would leave 90 hours during term time.

That would be equivalent to 9 hours per week of Independent study.

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