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Credit hours and 'contact' hours


4everHis
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A credit hour is usually based on semesters. So, a history class would be 3 semester hours, a physics class with lab would be four. Contact hours would be the hours actually spent in class: 3 "hours" (50 minutes) of class with a 3 hour lab (labs count half) for that physics class. We run into this with teacher recert classes--we used to be able to get 2 grad credit hours by going Friday eve, all day Sat and all day Sun. We no longer can. We go all day Sat and all day Sun and get 1 graduate semester hour of credit. It's based on 8 contact hours, with an outside project.

 

thanks. I had never heard the term before. This helps.

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In some fields, contact hours make a BIG difference. Music has a tendency to nickel and dime you to death-a 1 credit hour required large ensemble might be a 5 contact hour class, and if you end up with too many of those, it can become next to impossible to get even 12 credit hours of classes in during a semester. One of the things I always had to do as a faculty adviser was to advice restraint for kids who see the menu of choices and want to do them all (especially if they're coming from a situation where ensemble options were limited dramatically, like a small high school or homeschooling in a small geographic area)-but haven't done the math to realize that those 12 academic contact hours are more like 36 hours of actual work, so if you add 20 contact hours of music ensemble, plus practice time, you're looking, easily, at a 70 hour week.

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Credit hours are how they calculate what to charge for a course. So if a course is 4 credits and costs $100 per credit, the course would cost $400.

 

Contact hours are how many hours a student will be in class or the associated lab. At my college, I think science courses were usually 4-5 credits, with 3-4 hours of lecture, plus a 4-5 hour lab each week.

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In some fields, contact hours make a BIG difference. Music has a tendency to nickel and dime you to death-a 1 credit hour required large ensemble might be a 5 contact hour class, and if you end up with too many of those, it can become next to impossible to get even 12 credit hours of classes in during a semester. One of the things I always had to do as a faculty adviser was to advice restraint for kids who see the menu of choices and want to do them all (especially if they're coming from a situation where ensemble options were limited dramatically, like a small high school or homeschooling in a small geographic area)-but haven't done the math to realize that those 12 academic contact hours are more like 36 hours of actual work, so if you add 20 contact hours of music ensemble, plus practice time, you're looking, easily, at a 70 hour week.

 

Thanks for this info. I wondered if it meant something like this.

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