Course workload and ECTS

  • 1 ECTS is equivalent to 28 hours of work (EU definition is 25-30 hours of work).
  • A 5 ETCS course requires the student to work 140 hours all included (classes, homework, examination, preparation)
  • The workload should be distributed evenly. For a 5 ECTS quarter course that is 15 hours weekly over the 7 week teaching period and the remaining 35 hours are spent in the 2+ week examination period preparing for the examination.
  • Ideally the course website (slides for first lecture) explains to the students how they are supposed to spend their time. As an example you may specify that the 15 hours weekly during the 7 weeks of teaching is spent like this
    • 4 hours of lectures
    • 3 hours of exercise classes
    • 1 hour of Dat-lab
    • 3 hours for working out assignments
    • 2 hours for preparing lectures
    • 2 timer for preparing exercise classes

Note that for graduate courses with only 3-4 hours scheduled classes per week, you should be very particular about how the students are expected to spend their remaining 11-12 hours per week.

  • Deadlines for project work should not be in the middle of the examination period. Deadlines must be before the examination period or at the end of the examination period (to avoid clash with examination in other courses)