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Since online summer courses start when the spring semester ends, students avoid the long gap in learning that usually takes place over the summer. Without a summer session, most students have to spend critical time in the beginning of the fall semester getting re-acquainted with the routines and rigors of college-level study.
An online course should be as short or long as it needs to be in order to deliver the learning outcomes it promises. In practice, you might create a course that only has a few short 5 minute videos to teach something simple. For a more in depth flagship course you might make 25-50 video lessons each 5-20 minutes long.
Summer online courses can also be a great way to beef up a resume and impress admissions officers or future employers, who are on the lookout for students who went the extra mile in high school and college.
How many classes students should or could take depends greatly on the capabilities of the student both academically and financially. Most students would take no more than two classes over the summer as they can be incredibly condensed with a greater workload than the traditional semester-long classes.
You should probably allow 3 hours per week to read/listen to the online content for each course you take. This doesn't include assignments outside of class. Graduate study is more demanding than undergraduate study, so you should plan for 3 hours offline prep for every hour you spend “in class.”
You should plan to devote a minimum of three hours per week per credit, plus an additional hour per class each week to review materials. For instance, for a three-credit online course, you will need nine hours of study time and one hour of review time each week.
Thus, many online courses run the same length as their on-campus counterparts. This means that a semester-based schedule will include approximately 15 weeks of work for 9 hours per week or 135 hours total for the semester for each 3-credit course.
For one session, a student should expect to spend six hours a week on course work for every course credit. In other words, if a student is signed up for two or three courses during a session and each course is worth three credits, that student should plan to spend between 36 to 54 hours a week on course work.
One of the many advantages of online schools is that they will require less time from you compared to traditional schools. But then again, it is highly dependent on the online school that you or your child is enrolled in. On average, students spend four hours online.
The length of an online course depends on the end goal you want your students to achieve. Typical online course lengths can range anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours, depending on the type of course and complexity of the information you're teaching.
Answer: In most online schools, your child will receive weekly assignments that are due by a specified day of the week. It will be up to your child to be responsible for completing each of these assignments on time.
So, a 15 credit module is expected to involve 150 hours of study, a 30 credit module is 300 hours, a 45 credit module is 450 hours, a 60 credit module is 600 hours. Most undergraduate modules are either 15 or 30 credits.
The recommended amount of time to spend on your studies is 2-3 hours per credit per week (4 hours per credit per week for Math classes), right from week 1. For example, for a 3-unit course, this means 6-9 hours devoted to studying per week.
College courses are measured in credit hours. A 3-credit course meets for 2.5 hours per week.
Actual times for your courses may vary.) Example: 4 unit course 4 units x 3 hours of studying (per unit) = 12 hours of study time (These are suggestions for weekly study hours. Actual times for your courses may vary.) To help you determine the study load most appropriate for you, use the table on the next page.
You should expect online courses to take about the same amount of time as traditional courses.