Calculating Credits

Calculating credits #

The level of credit, awarded in nominal hours, for different activities is summarised below.

  • Undergraduate lectures: Credit is awarded to cover the preparation and delivery of the lecture, including uploading material to DUO; preparing and maintaining weekly problems and examples for workshops; and writing and marking exam questions. A taper reduces the credit over the first four years of giving the course, however it is acknowledged that the credit in the first year may not fully cover the set-up costs for giving the course for the first time. These are instead gradually recouped over the subsequent years that the course is given. Slightly more hours are given for Level 1 & 2 courses due to the larger class sizes. The credits, in hours per lecture given, are:

    Level Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 and beyond
    Levels 1 & 2 10 9 8 7
    Levels 3 & 4 9 8 7 6

  • Postgraduate lectures: Credit for postgraduate lectures is not tapered. The credit is higher for MSc courses given the more formal examination requirements on these courses. The credit is:

    MSc courses Other PGT
    6 hours/lecture 5 hours/lecture

    (where PGT is used here as a catch-all for taught postgraduate courses, outside of MSc courses, which in Physics are predominantly given in the initial stages of PhD studies.)

  • Laboratories: Laboratory credit includes preparing for labs and supervising lab sessions; and in most cases marking lab reports. All undergraduate and postgraduate labs are credited at a standard rate of 3 hours credit per contact hour in the lab. However, different lab activities have different amounts of time assumed spent in the labs, resulting in differences in total credit between different labs. The expectations are:

    Lab credits
    Level 1 discovery skills 1 afternoon $\equiv$ 3 hours contact per week for 9 weeks, in either Michaelmas or Epiphany term
    Level 2 bridge project 6 hours contact per group supervised $+$ 1 hour contact per examination
    Level 2 lab skills & electronics 1 afternoon = 3 hours contact per week for 6 weeks, in each of the skills lab, electronics lab and research-led investigation
    Level 3 labs (excl. astrolab) Lab leaders - 4 hours/week for 9 weeks per term; lab supervisors 3 hours/week for 9 weeks per term
    Team project 1 hour per week per group for 9 weeks, plus 6 hours under `organisation’ (see below) per group

    Astrolab has credit for 5 hours per week for lab leadership, spread across 2-3 staff members, per term, plus an additional 7 hours per week for supporting evening observing sessions, again split amongst more than one member of staff.

    We also credit the Level 3 Physics Computing project supervision using the same lab model (1 hour contact = 3 hours credit), with a similar 9 weeks of credit accrued per term.

    Where labs are taught at postgraduate level they accrue credit identically - so three hours credit per contact hour of lab.

  • Workshops Our workshops at all undergraduate levels, and workshops given to support both MSc and other PGT courses, all accrue credit similarly. One hour is awarded per contact hour within the workshop, and two hours of preparation time are awarded per set of workshops (i.e. usually within a week, where the content is the same but the class is split into multiple groups so more than one workshop occurs).

  • Tutorials/project supervision The credit for tutorials differs at each level, as follows:

    Module credit
    Level 1 Foundations 20 tutorial weeks in total: 2 hours preparation per tutorial week + 1 hour per tutorial given + 1 hour per week for weekly problem marking per tutorial group
    Level 2 Physics in Society 10 hours total per tutorial group for tutor meetings and digital media project marking (including 4 contact hours)
    Level 3 BSc project 15 hours total per student for meetings and assessment (including 7 contact hours)
    Level 4 project 44 hours per student for preparation, supervision and examining (including 22 contact hours)

  • Advisees Advisers receive a nominal credit of 1 hour per student, set at the start of the year. Note that this is not tracked closely through the year, so any changes in advisee numbers do not propagate through onto the spreadsheet quickly.

  • Moderating Level 4 project moderators receive a credit of 35 hours for their moderation duties, including attending the moderators’ meeting after the student interviews have concluded.

  • Organisation All other credit associated directly with teaching appears under `organisation’, which generally covers management within individual modules but can also cover specific tasks e.g. the Foundations of Physics 1 Tutorial Team (maintaining & improving tutorial questions, and writing the conceptual examination), or marking the short essay-style tests in Physics in Society. The credit is a direct allocation of a number of hours, specific to that task.

  • Postgraduate student supervision This is credited at a rate of 44 hours per student per year while they are conducting their PhD (or Masters by Research, where applicable). An exception is for particle physics students, who undertake full time taught work for half their first year, and so a reduced 22 hours credit is awarded to their supervisors on this basis. Once the registration status of the student changes at the end of their PhD, this is halved to 22 hours per year, and awarded on a pro-rota basis if the student finishes within the year. (This information is drawn from the Physics database.)

  • Administration The administration jobs are credited as per the organisation jobs, with the direct allocation of a specific number of hours dependent upon the size of the job.