For every hour students are in class, they should be spending two hours working on the course outside of class. This is the federal law minimum. If a student is taking 15 credits, that totals 45 hours per week. This is why 15 credits is considered a full-time load; it's the equivalent of working a full-time job.

In a face-to-face 5-credit course, students are spending about 5 hours in class each week. That means students should be spending about 10 hours outside of class working just on that course, e.g., doing assigned reading, studying for exams, completing writing assignments. For online classes, all 15 hours of work would occur online or independently.

Most of us struggle with finding the right balance in hybrid classes, pandemic notwithstanding. As we know, a hybrid course should be divided between meeting face-to-face (or Zoom) and working online. The literal balance is one of three distributions of face-to-face and online instruction:

40% face-to-face and 60% online
50% face-to-face and 50% online
60% face-to-face and 40% online

This means that instead of meeting every day Monday through Friday, a hybrid class might meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with online activities replacing the class time on Tuesday and Thursday. Instead of meeting in class about 5 hours/week, students might meet for about 3 hours/week. The 2 hours subtracted from in-class time would be added to the outside time students are expected to work on the course, taking the total out-of-class time to 13 hours.

Use the Wake Forest University's Center for the Advancement of Teaching course workload estimator to gauge how much work is in your course. Keep in mind that how much time a particular course activity takes will vary greatly by student. For example, students who are not native English speakers and who are still building their vocabulary will take longer to do a reading assignment than a native English speaker with strong reading skills.

Be clear with your students about how much work is expected in your course.

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The Law

Any institution of higher learning that receives federal funds, such as Highline College, uses the Carnegie Unit as the standard for the amount of work students are expected to do in a course.

A Carnegie Unit is:

An amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of student achievement that is an institutionally established equivalency that reasonably approximates not less than:

1. One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out-of-class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time; or

2. At least an equivalent amount of work as required in paragraph (1) of this definition for other academic activities as established by the institution, including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours. (See page 188 of this U.S. Department of Higher Education; 34 CFR 600.2)

For further reading:

Stachowiak, Bonnie. “How to Use a Course Workload Estimator, with Betsy Barre.” Teaching in Higher Ed.