Colleagues have shown great innovation, creativity and goodwill to support the move to emergency remote teaching in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Branch has been aware that many colleagues have put in additional hours in order to deliver the best quality experience possible for YSJ students, in many cases whilst also juggling home schooling and childcare. This is to be applauded and the Branch Committee has supported this whilst also expressing out concerns to senior management about the risk of staff burnout.
Moving forward into the 2020-21 academic year, it is now time to take a pause and consider the best way to deliver programmes and to consider the implications of still delivering a significant proportion in an online format. Our recent survey identified that tutorials have, on average, been taking about 1.6 times the normal of the face-to-face equivalent, with online teaching activities taking up to 2.6 times longer. Click here to view a summary of the YSJ UCU Online Teaching Survey Results or here to see the complete raw data. These results provides more of a breakdown of activities.
Action to be taken
In order to properly capture the workload implications for 2020-21, we are encouraging all members to map out their own academic workload using the table taken from the most recent version of the Academic Work Planning Model with some minor modifications. Taking into account the results of our survey, your category 2 hours should reflect the additional time taken for preparation for teaching if you are developing online resources. Given that it is accepted that developing new modules usually takes longer, this should also be taken into consideration when working out the category 2 hours that will be required for this.
Note that e-teaching is in the Academic Work Allocation Model that was produced in 2017 as category 1 hours and the QAA guidance states: ‘Contact time may also take a virtual rather than face-to-face form, through the use of email, email discussion groups, virtual learning environments and other technology-aided means’. (QAA, 2011: p4) YSJ UCU considers that pre-recorded lectures fit this definition and should, therefore, be included as category 1 hours.
In line with the 2017 Academic Work Allocation Model the group tutorials indicated in the principles document from university management should also be considered as category 1 hours.
There is a template on UCU Teams based on the one that was previously in use to assist with the recording of time, and it is intended that completing this activity will provide a basis for workload discussions with management.