Policies and Practices in Enforcing the Credit Hour

Abstract

This chapter describes the results of an institutional survey designed to learn how different colleges and universities apply the credit hourwhether they use it to measure credits to graduation, how they define it, and how they determine the number of credits to award for any course. We also did a survey of credits in relation to time in class-that is, the extent to which these institutions continue to use time as one of the primary bases for awarding credits.Working with the Office of Institutional Research at the University of Delaware (UD/OIR), we invited about seventy-five institutions to participate in a survey of their policies and practices with regard to awarding the credit hour. The institutions were drawn from participants in the past six years of a survey administered by the University of Delaware on instructional costs.Institutions were identified by the UD/OIR based on their participation in the instructional cost survey and their reputation for having "good" data management. Participation was voluntary, and the anonymity of the participating institutions preserved. The survey consisted of two parts: one, a request for information about their written policies and procedures for assigning credits to classroom time, and two, an analysis of course data files to evaluate the relation of classroom time to credits awarded. Of the seventy-five institutions invited, fifty-five agreed to participate in providing a course data file, as follows:• Forty-two public and thirteen private institutions • Nineteen research or doctoral institutions

Asynchronous Online Education Credit Hours by the Book

“…This transition also provided reason for the National Education Association's recommendations to address the need for standards and minimal requirements for enrollment in secondary education. A standard of 14 units of credit became required for college entrance with each unit of credit equaling a minimum of 130 instructional hours (Heffernan 1973;Lorimer 1962;Shedd 2003a;2003b;Wellman and Ehrlich 2003a;2003b;Wolanin 2003). The 14 units were equivalent to four years of high school education.…”

Time management in higher education

“…Lecture courses, the predominant mode of instruction, are used in numerous colleges worldwide regardless of the level of these courses (Shedd, 2003b). To meet the requirement of the CHS, lecture courses have been scheduled so that one contact hour weekly for a number of weeks is equivalent to one credit hour.…”