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I've been time tracking my academic work in Fall 2020 with @toggltrack and I finally crunched some numbers yesterday. It's been an interesting exercise.
The most interesting point is how much time it took to convert lectures into an online format: /1
The most interesting point is how much time it took to convert lectures into an online format: /1
In 2015 I wrote a Masters course on High Contrast Imaging from scratch - 10 lectures, each lecture with one Jupyter notebook demonstrating a HCI principle, and the final take home exam was a data cube with the instructions "Find the planet(s)" /2
In 2015 this took me 168 hours, so just over 16 hours for me to prepare one lecture and write a Jupyter notebook. It wasn't perfect, and there was lots of room for improvement. /3
In Fall 2020, I taught a Masters course with another Leiden staff member. I did 5 out of the 12 lectures. This was simpler in a way - I already had lecture notes from the previous years, and we did not have to redo the homeworks too much. /4
For those 5 lectures, it took me 112 hours - about 22 HOURS per prepared lecture. This included updating the lecture notes, recording and editing about 1 hour of videos per lecture, and learning the new online system that we got in 2020. /5
Now, this is the first semester where I've had to do a large scale video editing and it was a steep learning curve, and we're ready for next semester. But when I hear someone say "online teaching is easier for professors" I suppress a nervous giggle and go lie down for a bit. /6
I freely admit I'm a dinosaur with computers now, so my learning curve is more of a shallow ramp. But please be gentle with your teachers if they appear to be struggling or if the material has rough corners :) We're all doing our best to give you a good learning experience! /7
And remember - if you're a student, sending a few words of encouragement to your teachers or professors goes a long way - we really appreciate any words of support! /fin
(and go watch "Chernobyl" (2019) - it's an excellent series!)
(and go watch "Chernobyl" (2019) - it's an excellent series!)
