EDUCATIONAL POLICY COMMITTEE

Rules for Delinking Credit Hours from Contact Hours

From the EPC 1993-94 Mid Year Report, approved at the February 1994 Faculty meeting:

The basic rationale for permitting 4-credit courses with fewer than 4 class hours is that the instructor-student interaction outside the traditional classroom structures can be educationally valuable. However, departures from such structures must have clear justification. An acceptable course proposal for 4-credits with fewer than 4 contact hours must show:

  1. that instructor-student interaction outside the classroom will be an integral part of the proposed course and have sufficient educational value to substitute for class time; or
  2. that the special nature of the skills to be taught in the proposed course is such that students will clearly benefit from augmenting traditional class time with alternative instructor-student interaction.
    3.
Normally, merely adding more reading or term papers will not meet this standard. On the other hand, EPC has and will continue to grant requests for the addition of a fourth credit-hour to a course that meets for only three traditional class hours a week where one of the following two conditions is met:
  1. Four credit courses with fewer than four lecture hours will normally be approved when there are significant additional projects over and above those assignments generally used in a 3-credit version of the course. Course proposals should contain draft syllabuses with the number and types of projects students will undertake and the way these will be evaluated. Faculty should generally expect to confer formally with individual students several times as needed over the course of the semester to assess their progress.
  2. Four credit courses with fewer than four lecture hours will normally be approved when there is a requirement for the entire class outside class lectures: for example, required labs, service projects, or attendance at fora (including, for instance, film showings or music performances). Such requirements must be in addition to standard requirements for a 3-credit hour course, and generally students will be expected to submit written reports of the lab, fora, etc. for evaluation by the instructor. Generally, the outside time required of students must equal at least 2 hours per week in addition to the outside time normally required in a 3-credit version of the course.
As these criteria indicate, the burden of proving the pedagogical efficacy of the "extra hour" falls on the instructor. While department chairs may submit packages of course proposals which include proposals for 4-credit courses with fewer than 4 contact hours, EPC will decide on the appropriate number of contact hours on a case by case basis. Department chairs interested in submitting such course proposals should make sure that instructors submit a completed syllabus with the course approval request.