Ohio Department of Higher Education policies, U.S. Department of Education laws, and higher education accreditation standards require institutions utilizing federal financial aid to document how in-class and out-of-class time equivalencies are determined for both in-person and distance learning courses. 

According to Ohio State policy (go.osu.edu/credithours), One credit hour shall be assigned for each three hours per week of the average student's time, including class hours, required to earn the average grade of "C" in this course. For example, if you are teaching a three credit-hour course, this means that students should expect to spend nine (9) hours each week engaging with your course.

When developing an online course, it is essential to carefully consider student workload estimations to ensure that what you are requiring of your students is appropriate for your respective course credit hours. The new requirement to describe the regular and substantive interaction in the course support designing a course that includes the appropriate amount of student work as critical to effective course design.

In addition to sketching out a breakdown of weekly estimated workload in the Distance Learning Cover Sheet, we recommend providing an overview of how students should plan to budget and allocate their time in the How This Online Course Works section of the syllabus. This will increase transparency of student expectations and support student metacognition and time management, leading towards a greater chance of success in the course. 

A team of faculty at Rice University developed a workload estimator tool that was later improved by a professor at Wake Forest (see below). After filling out the fields shown, the tool will estimate the contact hours, independent (homework) hours, and total number of hours it takes a student to complete your course. While this is not a perfect tool, it can help you think through the student experience of completing the requirements of your course.