Credit and Contact Hours
At Carroll College, one credit hour equals 45 hours of student time that includes work in and out of class. For courses within the standard 16 week term, the following list defines the contact hours for each instructional method.
- Lecture, Seminar, and Online Synchronous Courses require one contact hour per week for each credit with two hours of outside work implied. One 50 minute period equals one hour of contact time.
- Laboratory Courses require a minimum of 2 contact hours per credit with a one hour of outside work implied.
- Field Based Courses or other courses without structured meeting times including practicum, clinical, field experience, research, independent study, and thesis require three hours of work per week for each credit.
- Internships must be a minimum of 8 weeks in duration and require 42 contact hours per credit with an implied minimum of 3 hours of work outside the internship experience. The specific content of these additional hours is determined by a Carroll College Faculty Internship Supervisor.
- Hybrid Asynchronous Courses combine asynchronous online and traditional in-person classroom instruction. In-person contact hours are reduced from the standard lecture/seminar/online-synchronous model while the asynchronous online engagement is increased as appropriate to the instructional method. Between 40-75% of the scheduled meeting times may be replaced with online/out-of-classroom components. For the online/out-of-classroom components, the Carroll College policy for Regular and Substantive Interaction applies.
- Online Asynchronous Courses require 45 hours of student engagement including instruction and activity per credit. Instruction and activities must comply with the Regular and Substantive Interaction Policy.
Non-Traditional Courses
This policy applies to all Carrol College courses including the small range of non-traditional courses that fall outside of the standard 16 week term. Non-traditional courses require the same amount of student work per credit hour as traditional courses and follow the same instructional methods listed above. The number of contact hours and outside of class work is adjusted for the number of weeks for each non-standard course. For example, an 8 week course requires 2 hours of contact per week for each credit with 4 hours of implied outside work.
Non-Traditional Field Based Courses that are predominantly field trip based are required to complete 45 hours of student academic engagement per credit. This should count only the hours when students are actively engaged in learning and should not include the travel time to and from the field trip site. For field trip courses where the primary engagement happens over consecutive days such as study abroad intensives or week-long field excursions, the course requires engagement throughout the length of the term for student financial aid purposes. This can be accomplished via, but not limited to, pre- and post- field trip activities at the start and end of the term.