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The Specialist
EAD - Education - Digital Learning
Neuroscience - Learning
Calculation of workload for distance learning content
Eventually, employees from various educational institutions ask themselves about calculating the workload for training a distance education course or discipline.
The first point here should be the description of what synchronous and asynchronous activities are. It is understood as synchronous activity in an EAD model to those where the teacher or tutor follows the classes live with the student. These can be calculated according to the teacher's time in direct contact with the student. For example, in a live broadcast, if the teacher spends 4 hours a day in class with the student, we can count 4 hours a day of class as class workload. So a week with 5 working days would have 5 days x 4 hours per day = 20 hours of class per week.
Asynchronous models, on the other hand, are composed of activities and contents where the student determines his study pace, whether or not he is accompanied by a teacher or tutor. Generally, in these cases, there is no face-to-face or tele-face meeting, with the use of some communication screen, in which case the tutor presents himself as someone to answer questions, usually through an online doubt forum.
In this study we will address exactly this context. Asynchronous models of courses or subjects in distance education. After all, how do we calculate the workload in a digital distance learning course?
There is currently no exact metric for this calculation, since to reach this number we have several variables to consider. As an example, imagine a 16-year-old reading a one-page text, probably this young person should take more or less time than a mature 40-year-old person, or even watching a 5-minute video if there is any. doubt, wouldn't you go back to the part of the video where you felt the need for more attention? These and many other variables must be considered when creating content for distance learning. Everything here is very relative, and must be considered to reach a close, but not exact, number. After all, as educators it is up to us to estimate in the best possible way to ensure relevant learning for students and others impacted by the exposed content. As a suggestion, I suggest making a reverse estimate in relation to how much workload is intended to be achieved.
Below are two examples:
1. Free course: “HTML Programming”. Hours: 4 hours.
two. Higher education subject: “Project Methodology”. Hours: 40 hours.
The first question that should be considered is, how does the student learn in the digital distance learning model? Neuroscience and psychopedagogy show us that learning is the evocation of information, or the consolidation of a long-term memory. (If you want to know more about this subject, see some articles here.) In this sense, we need to stimulate the person exposed to the content with multiple sensory stimuli. Taking into account various cognitive aspects related to learning. In the digital environment, we can do this by creating digital educational objects, also known as OEDs.
Second question. How can a student achieve this goal, learning, within a dynamic distance learning? Achieving long-term memories through the assimilation of content formed by multiple digital learning objects. There are some of them, texts, images, videos, podcasts, interactive digital activities, infographics, questions, games and other activities that can be elaborated for a digital dynamic.
After all, how do we calculate the workload in an online distance learning course?
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