UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING ACADEMIC WORKLOAD AND LEARNING

1
UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING ACADEMIC WORKLOAD AND
LEARNING

• AN ENGINEERING COUNCIL FOR UNDERGRADUATE
  EDUCATION (E-CUE) STUDY
  
• AY 2003-04
• September, 2004

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ENGINEERING WORKLOAD STUDY GOAL/ PLAN

• Goal Examine undergraduate engineering workload
  with respect to learning, assessment, teaching
  methods, and study habits.
  
• Hypothesis
• There is a measurable workload hours issue.
• There is a perceived workload hours problem that
  impacts student motivation and learning.
  
• Study
• Review baseline workload data from standard MIT
  student surveys (COFHE Senior Exit Survey,
  Enrolled Student Survey, EBI Senior Engineering
  Survey) and subject evaluation surveys
• Hold focus groups with engineering seniors to
  establish issues related to engineering
  workload.
  
• Test and distribute engineering workload survey
  to seniors in 3 largest departments (ChemE, ME,
  EECS).
  
• Juniors also surveyed on academic work hours
  outside of class in these same departments.

3
Findings Measuring out-of-class academic
workload

• Is there a measurable workload problem? The
  suggested number of outside of class academic
  workload hours for an average number of academic
  subjects taken by a student (45 units) is 30
  hours. In the 3 departments studied (Mechanical
  Engineering- Mech Eng, Chemical Engineering- Chem
  Eng, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science-
  EECS), students report average work hours as
  follows
• Juniors and seniors in Chemical Engineering and
  EECS report higher than 30 hours per week on
  average for their academic workload outside of
  class.
• Women students in all departments average longer
  average hours outside of class than men students.

4
Findings Factors that impact sense of academic
workload

• Even if academic workload is not measurably
  greater than the average of 30 hours per week
  outside of class, students sense of high
  workload can be exacerbated by poorly structured
  teaching/ learning experience an engineering
  subject. Perceptions of high