It is not a class that is continuing from another semester. i don’t know the details about why the lab is long I only know that they are very long. I believe it is the procedures.
@PurpleTitan I am a concerned parent because I want my capable student to succeed, not burn out, and not get sick. I don’t know if my kid could work 60 hours a week because of disability. I don’t know that I’d want my kid to do that. That said, my kid is excellent in the lab; has worked in labs and employers gave wonderful recs. It is not an issue of not knowing what to do or being uncomfortable in the lab.
Course is only given once a year.
@florida26 “Learning should not be a game about who is most macho but a steady path toward gaining knowledge and wisdom” <- I completely agree.
I would suggest that your student make an appointment with the prof. Discuss the labs and the time it is taking to get them completed. Perhaps this teacher can identify the reasonS for the lengthy times, and can help with strategies to reduce the time.
what does 1 credit mean to your school? For many colleges it means one academic hour (50 min) of class …so you would also have 2-3 hours of homework outside the class as well.
Some colleges say 1 credit is a 3 academic hour a week class + 6-9 hours homework.
1 credit is typically 50 minutes a week.
Except for labs, it’s 2 hours and 40 minutes.
And the reports take forever to write for a senior level lab. 8-10 hours of work per report a week.
My student has a science class that is worth 1 regular class at the college. It has two 75 minute lectures a week and two labs a week. The course catalog lists the labs as lasting 4.5 hours each so 9 hours a week. In reality, the students begin lab at 2 and all of the students usually stay until 9 or 10 pm or later to finish the lab with a brief dinner break so 14 or 15 hours of lab a week. The course has 1 midterm and six 10-15 page publication quality lab reports.
This seems to me like an inordinate amount of work for a 1 credit course. Has anyone encountered anything similar? Is there any recourse?
Looking back in the posts, it looks like 32 credits are needed to graduate, so a normal course load is 4 courses. This means that each course is equivalent to 4 credit-hours at schools using the credit-hour system. This means that one course should have 12 total hours per week of work (including in-class and out-of-class time). Looks like this particular lab is more than that, but it is likely that there are other courses at the school which are less than that.
At schools where all courses have the same credit value, it is likely that differences in workload per credit are larger than at schools where credit values can vary.
When I was at Tulane in the 1970’s we used the 1 credit per course system, as opposed to the credit-hour system that is more common, and currently in use by Tulane. Not sure when they switched. But back then, just as @ucbalumnus says, they considered 1 credit unit to be equivalent to 4 credit hours at other schools, even though we only met for three 50 minute sessions or 2 75 minute sessions a week for most courses. So if you took a summer school course worth 3 credit hours at WUSTL, for example, you only got 3/4 of a credit unit in transfer at Tulane. Labs were not listed separately but we just considered part of the course. I happened to be in their honors chemistry course freshman year, and we had lab from 1-8 PM every Wednesday! Still one credit total for the course + lab. The non-honors lab was only 2 hours a week.
It would be helpful to know what science lab course this is. Some are more time consuming than others. It would also be helpful to know what year the college student is. My kid says that the higher level courses had a higher level of work, written assignments, and difficulty of labs.
In any event…the parent really can do nothing about this. If this is really an issue for the student, the STUDENT needs to talk first to the lab instructor, second to the course professor, and third to the department chairperson.
Otherwise, this is complaining for the sake of complaining. They could drop the course if it’s that much work. See if they can take it elsewhere, or with a different professor. But…it might not end up being less work.
Student is a junior. Physical Science Advanced Lab that soph, jr and seniors take.
Can’t take it elsewhere. Only given once a year.
The model lab report is 20 pages typed plus pages of figures, references and raw data