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That’ s three hours to research, write, format and learn a new lecture( yes, that’ s how it works). Tutorials, which are deemed to be easier to do than lectures, might get an hour of preparation time to go with the actual hour of face-to-face time.
The teaching Workload then gets even more complicated as hours are allocated for marking, creating new subjects, managing large classes, implementing new teaching delivery methods, and so on. By now, as you can imagine, the Workload, which is notionally calculated on a spreadsheet( although the spreadsheet never works, so some universities prefer to do all these calculations with a handwritten document), would defy interpretation by the entire mathematics department( if you’ ve still got one of those).
All that really matters – as far as your head of department is concerned – is that your teaching Workload hours match the specified target hours, say 651.5 hours.
If your total is less than the target( say 651.0 hours), then you will be allocated more teaching.
If your total exceeds the target, then your teaching load will … be
… reduced … … Sorry, small technical glitch there. I had to have a long lie-down after writing that. That never happens. If your Workload exceeds the target, you will just have to do it as“ the budget is very tight this year”.
Your Workload will be the biggest point of contention in your working year. Mainly because although it is set at the start of the year, your head of department will see no problem in adding new tasks( e. g. an entire extra subject to teach) during the year. Attempts to have any of these new tasks added to your Workload document will be ignored until the end of the year, when you will be thanked for all your efforts and promised that the Workload for the next year will be lighter.
But of course it won’ t. The justification for not reducing it the next year is simple: if you managed to do it this year, then next year it will be even easier as you are now“ experienced”. Surviving the year without having a nervous breakdown is taken as evidence that the Workload was manageable all along. ■
The Secret Lecturer is a deeply tormented and pitiful soul who has spent the last 20 years or so working at some of Australia’ s very best( but more often very worst) universities. He / she / it wishes to remain anonymous, for reasons which should be fairly self-evident.
For more bad advice, go to www. secretlecturer. com
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