Preliminary Work

The IFS provided the steer towards looking at time. In the report I referred to an interactional network proposed by Philip Juler. I had been directed to this during my MA when looking at distance learning students and the various factors that impact on their lives. Juler had (I think) developed his network when looking at discourse but so far I have not been able to find any published work by him that refers to this.

I initially developed a schematic outline for the research which I discussed briefly with my supervisor at IOE and the College Principal. If either saw immediate problems in it then I knew I would have to go back to the drawing board! Fortunately both were supportive.

Before finalising my proposal I spent the summer and early autumn of 2007 investigating what has already been written on time and study workload. A trawl throughthe main journals has yielded a number of articles related to time but mainly these centre on full-time students whereas my interest is in distance learners.

From my engineering and management background I am particularly interested in quantifying study. Ellie Chambers at the OU wrote several influencial articles and chapters relating to this in the early 1990s but little appears to have been done since then. I was at the OU earlier this month and confirmed that the rules-of-thumb used to calculate the time for reading, watching and listening to study materials have not changed in twenty years or so.

Now that we have online interaction I am also interested to know whether anyone has come up with any rules to cover quantifying this. So far as I can see there is nothing. Gilly Salmon suggests that it takes at least one minute to open and read a message posted online. Otherwise the best that I have found is advice to 'pilot' online activity and record the time taken. What I find concerning is the emergence of the 'digital natives' whose expectations for study are potentially a lot different to the older students.

A couple of months ago I read the EU document The Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area developed as part of the Bologna process. Credits and qualifications within this framework are expected to be described in terms of learning outcomes, levels and associated workloads. The definition given for workload is ‘a quantitative measure of all learning activities that may feasibly be required for the achievement of the learning outcomes’ and in tandem with this, time is considered to be that ‘required for an average student to undertake the workload’.

Two significant assumptions seem clear from the framework. First, that all learning activities can be identified and rated for the time they will take to complete. Secondly, that the average student and the time he or she has available for study can be defined. To my mind this means that only if these two sets of parameters can be identified will it be possible to determine whether study feasibility can actually be evaluated.

Society is changing and I know from my students that what was acceptable 20 years ago is no longer the case. Therefore I feel it is very important that the academic community discovers more about today's learners and the pressures that they exist within. These thoughts are what is driving this research and the thesis proposal developed from this.