Analysis of Time Investment in Online Teaching: Log Diary

Approach
Alka Dwivedi, Anita Sengar, Manisha Solanki
School of Business, University of Petroleum& Energy Studies,
Energy Acres, Dehradun, India
+911352770137
adwivedi@ddn.upes.ac.in; asengar@ddn.upes.ac.in; ms_solanki@ddn.upes.ac.in

ABSTRACT An online learning is the one in which the students access the
The present paper aims at analysing the time investment involved complete course through internet. Online courses do not involve
in delivering blended and online courses and assess the increasing in-person interaction of the teacher and the student. The
work load of faculty in online and blended teaching environment. communication in the course is done through an online medium.
For the study, twenty two faculty members from different Online learning is relatively new but rapidly growing within and
departments agreed to log their daily activities related to their outside university setting. Enrolments in online courses are
respective online and blended courses. The log diary data which increasing rapidly. More than thirty percent of higher education
was collected over a period of one semester shows individual students now take at least one course online [9]. 69.1 percent of
variation in the performance of different activities by the the primary academic leaders consider online learning significant
instructor. However, it also reflects considerable increase in the for their long term strategy. (onlinelearningconsortium.org/2015
time spent by the instructors in delivering online/blended courses. survey). Given this context the faculty is increasingly expected to
This time is over and above the contact hours scheduled for the develop and deliver quality online courses
class. Analyzing the time spent in different activities, clearly
shows that developing, delivering and administration of online 2. OBJECTIVE
sessions increases the workload of instructors. Inferences are also Online teaching differs from face to face teaching on a few
drawn regarding the changed skill set required for delivering important parameters. [5]. One of the major elements of
online courses as well as the changed expectations of the online difference is the investment of time required for delivering online
students. The paper suggests the need to review and rationalize courses. Online teaching redefines faculty members‟ schedule. [16]
the work load of faculty members delivering online courses. The present paper aims at in-depth analysis of the time invested
by the instructors on various activities and thus the increase in
CCS Concepts workload of the faculty involved in delivering online courses.
• Human-centered computing➝ User studies
3. METHODOLOGY
Keywords This study was conducted with the support of 22 instructors from
Online teaching, blended courses, log diary different departments of two different schools under a private
university in India. Each of these instructors was teaching a
1. INTRODUCTION different course. The online sessions of these courses were
Increasing use of ICT in modern higher education is slowly but delivered through Blackboard, the Learning Management System
surely changing the education landscape. Higher education (LMS) of the university.
institutions are increasingly implementing e-learning in their
traditional and distance education programs. [5] In e-learning or Some of the courses considered for study were delivered in online
web based learning students interact with their courses online via mode while others were taught in blended mode. The online
some technological platform. E-learning has two distinct formats courses were taken by off-campus students. In blended courses the
viz. Blended learning and online learning. A blended learning students attended lectures in the classroom and were also required
environment uses real time or asynchronous online instructions to attend online sessions of the course on Blackboard. The student
along with traditional onsite learning to meet the learning strength varied from 40 to 350 in various courses. The digital
objectives. [15] content of the course was uploaded on the blackboard at the start
of the semester. However, the instructors could make relevant
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for changes in the content by adding, deleting or modifying the basic
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are content provided on the LMS. As the course progressed, the
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that instructors could engage students in course related discussions and
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights assess their learning by creating quizzes/ tests and assignments.
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be The communication was done through online announcements on
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or Blackboard, emails or over phone. The students enrolled in
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior
blended courses met their professor in class and could discuss
specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
Permissions@acm.org. about the course in person during the office hours.
ICDTE 2019, October 25–27, 2019, Yamanashi, Japan Log Diary: Most of the e-learning research focuses on the student
© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery
satisfaction and learning outcomes. Studies are also available
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-7220-6/19/10…$15.00
describing the perception of students and the faculty about e
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3369199.3369237 learning. However, very few go into the nuances of e learning

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showing what actually entails in online teaching. Such a nuanced required the instructor to spend approximately 77 (36 + 41) hours,
study is necessary to get a clearer picture of skill requirements for which increases the workload by 113.89 percent.
online teaching and to understand what set of activities impact the
effectiveness of online teaching. An online instructor can collect In an online course, the presence of a strong operations team, in
such detailed information only through daily logging of every addition to the IT staff, handled course development and
single activity. Therefore, log diary method was chosen to collect administration related issues. Since it also worked as the interface
the real time between the faculty and students, the instructors were relieved of
query handling and trouble shooting in the case of off- campus
After conducting preliminary discussions and interview with the students. In an online course, the instructors were mainly involved
faculty about the activities required in online teaching, log diaries in the course delivery. On an average, each instructor spent 57.43
were prepared. The daily log required data related to the course hours in course delivery in an online course.
development, course delivery and course administration and
troubleshooting. The log diaries captured only the work done in 4.2. Type of Activities
the course outside the classroom. The time spent in the class or a Course development activity usually entails creating digital
scheduled online lecture is to be understood as the timetabled learning resources in text, audio and video formats. In many
activity. The lag diaries recorded only the activities which were instances, e-learning software is used to create interactive videos
done in addition to the timetabled sessions for the blended courses. and assessment exercises. In this study, the learning resources
were available on Blackboard for all the 22 courses. This content
For online courses, the instructors were supported by a strong was designed and developed before the start of the semester by
operations team, which managed most of the interactions with the the faculty members with the support of IT staff and instructional
students. Operations team communicated with the students and designer appointed for this purpose. For online courses, also, the
provided them the support related to course administration. content was made available on the Blackboard and the operations
Collecting data through detailed logs had its benefits as well as team supported the instructors throughout the semester.
disadvantages. On one hand, it was expected to get exhaustive The data showed that course development took 330 hours in the
details of the instructor‟s daily activity in their online course at the entire semester, which was 15 hours per instructor.
other end it was viewed as adding to the, already heavy, workload
of the instructors. Such data collection may also be apprehended Course delivery per instructor was calculated to be 18.7 hours and
as monitoring of the daily activities of the instructors for course administration issues took 7.8 hours per instructor in the
management purposes. Therefore, at the beginning of the semester semester. Creating assignments and assessments took
30 minute meeting was conducted with the instructors to explain considerable time in the online mode.
them the objectives of the study, distribute the log diaries and Table 1.Total and Average Time Spent per Instructor in
clarify their doubts. During the semester, emails were sent to the Course Development Activities
participants of the study gently reminding them to complete their
daily logs. The log diaries were collected at the end of the Time Spent
semester. Activities (in minutes)
Twenty-two, completely filled, diaries were considered for Total Average
analysis. It can be safely assumed that some of the data recorded Developing digital content 5585 253.9
was based on guesstimates about how the time was spent. Some
responses were recorded as total time spent in the week in that Creating Assignment 4900 222.7
activity rather than the time spent in each day. Creating Test 3405 154.8

4. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS Creating Discussion Thread 1570 71.4

The data was entered into excel sheets, coded and analyzed to Recording Lectures 4340 197.3
understand the activities performed and the time spent on each of
Total 19800 900
them while delivering online sessions. The analysis was done at
three different levels viz. the level of course design, the type of Time in Hours 330 15
activities and at the level of administrative positions of the
instructors. The data showed individual variations in the type of
activities and the time spent by the faculty at all levels. Table2. Total and Average Time Spent per Instructorin
Course Delivery Activities
4.1. Course Design Course Delivery Activities Time Spent (in minutes)
Out of the 22 courses considered for the study, 14 were delivered
in blended mode and eight were taught in online mode. In a Total Average
blended course the instructors spent an average of 40.8 hours in Evaluation/Assessment 11465 521.2
online activities. This included revising and updating the content,
Creating Announcement 1219 55.5
communicating with the students and assessment. It also includes
the time instructors spent on helping students sort out the Communicating with 3059 139.1
technical issues on Blackboard by coordinating with the IT staff. Students
This time was in addition to the time tabled contact hours and Searching for relevant online 8931 406
other scheduled activities in the course. A contact hour is “a unit content
of measure that represents an hour of scheduled instructions given
Total 24674 1121.55
to students” [10]. The courses which required 36 hours of
teaching for requisite credits, when delivered in blended mode Time in Hours 411.233 18.7

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 Table 3. Total and Average Time Spent per Instructor in demands placed on instructors; online courses create an additional
Course Administration Activities and significant time burden for instructors [14].
Course Administration Studies have examined the workloads and stress levels and the
Activities Time Spent (in minutes) anti-educational consequences of these. [3, 4] Online teaching
Total Average has many implications for faculty work life and faculty needs
greater support in course development [11]. Management needs to
Answering students question 3557 161.7 review and rationalize the work load of faculty As online course
about course development, delivery and administration involves massive
Dealing with Course 3680 165 component of IT a strong, efficient and dedicated IT support is
Administration necessary for optimum utilization of faculty‟s time and efforts.
Interacting with student in 2478 112.6
person regarding the
6. CONCLUSION
online/blended course Published studies highlight the advantages of e-learning for both
the students and the faculty. With increasing number of students,
Any other Activity not 620 28.2 enrolling for online courses it becomes imperative that the process
mentioned Above of online teaching is understood in its entirety. Expected benefits
Total 10285 467.5 from e-learning systems can be reaped only when provisions are
Time in Hours 171.417 7.8
made for the specific requirements of this new form of teaching.
As Simpson [13] rightly reminds that teachers should be seen as
navigators of information not the gatekeepers of knowledge and
professionalism, reflective practice and scholarship should remain
4.3. Administrative Positions central to the teacher‟s role.
Data was further analyzed with respect to the administrative
positions. Instructors were divided into three categories. The 7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
instructors who were heading a function or a department were These results are a part of the research funded by Laureate
grouped together as HODs. Other group which coordinated one or Education Inc. The research aims at identifying the factors which
other courses in the school, along with teaching was named as improve teaching effectiveness in higher education in the context
Coordinators and remaining were the Lecturers whose primary of e-learning environment. The authors of this paper are co-
responsibility was teaching. The average number of hours spent investigators in the study.
by HODs in online teaching was 37.11 hours. Course coordinators
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