EAC report to the faculty on Teaching Load Guidelines … Report.pdfEAC report to the faculty on Teaching Load Guidelines (TLGs) Submitted May 2017 Overview The TLGs were designed

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EAC report to the faculty on Teaching Load Guidelines (TLGs)

Submitted May 2017

Overview

The TLGs were designed to provide a different way of measuring teaching, while keeping the

actual expectations for teaching the same. That is, most people would continue teaching exactly as

much as they had been under the old Instructional Unit or “IU” system (in which each fall or spring

course represented either one or two IUs, depending on its enrollment cap, and each faculty member

taught 5 IUs per year plus every other winter term), but instead of measuring in IUs, we began

measuring separately by preparations, contact hours, and enrollments, and allowing for tradeoffs

among these dimensions within and across years. It was thought that this system would allow us to

achieve greater equity within and across departments by recognizing that a full load could take many

different forms (e.g., five courses, all with medium enrollments and medium contact hours; four courses

with particularly high enrollments; five courses, all with few students, but meeting for many hours per

week), and by making it easier to see and remedy previously hidden overloads and underloads (e.g.,

when a colleague’s 5 IUs involved an inordinate number of hours in the classroom, or when a

colleague’s teaching added up to 5 IUs based on enrollment caps, but yielded actual enrollments

substantially lower than those caps). It was also believed that, once freed by the TLGs from concerns

about intra- and inter-departmental teaching equity, we could turn our attention more fully to the

things we really care about: curriculum, pedagogy, and student learning.

The EAC analyzed six years’ worth of teaching data (the three years immediately before

implementation of the TLGs, and the three years immediately after), examined chairs’ responses to a

survey about the impact of the TLGs, and took stock of general feedback shared with us regarding the

TLGs to determine how the TLGs are working: Are we indeed teaching the same amount as we had

been under the IU system? To what extent are the TLGs helping us pursue equity among colleagues

within and across departments? Have there been unintended consequences of the TLGs? Have the

TLGs allowed us to turn our attention more fully to curriculum, pedagogy, and student learning? We

found, in short (though we expand on each of these points below), that as a faculty we are generally

meeting the TLGs, that they are helping us pursue equity in teaching loads, and that we are teaching

just slightly less than under the IU system, but that rather than freeing us to focus more single-

mindedly on the important work of our departments and programs, the TLGs have done the opposite:

colleagues feel anxious in light of how difficult it is to compute and track one’s own teaching load, and

the complexity of the TLGs has led to preoccupation with what aspects of our work are counted in

what way. Below, we elaborate on each of these points and lay out some options for the faculty to

consider.

Evidence

First, we should remind you of our method for the quantitative analyses reported here. We

computed teaching loads for all members of the teaching faculty, regardless of their FTE, across the last

three years before the TLGs went into effect, and first three years after they went into effect. For each

measure, we took actual teaching as a proportion of expected teaching. For example, a hypothetical

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full-time colleague teaching 4.5 preps, 18 hours, and 90 students is teaching at 100% of expected or a

proportion of 1.0, whereas one teaching 4 preps, 16 hours, and 80 students is teaching at about 89% of

expected, or a proportion of 0.89. The computation is straightforward for those who are a full FTE. The

mapping of partial FTEs onto expected teaching is somewhat less straightforward because it requires

assumptions about how we convert it to a 1.0 FTE equivalent. For many of the plots we report here, we

therefore focus on the subset of faculty members in each of the target years who were at a full FTE for

that year. For other plots, we include partial-FTE faculty, making sure to use the same method

consistently for converting the partial FTE to a 1.0 equivalent. Descriptive statistics and histograms

summarizing teaching load data (preps, hours, enrollments, and the average) for each of the six years

studied, for faculty at 1.0 FTE, are provided in the Appendix at the end of this document.

The evidence that, on the whole, we are meeting the TLGs can be found in the following plots.

They indicate that, on each of the three measures, a majority of full-FTE faculty members have been

teaching within the expected range, with many fewer teaching above or below the range. When the

three measures are taken together, fewer than 10% of full-FTE faculty in a given year are high or low on

more than one measure; the large majority are even or out-of-range on only a single measure.

As would be expected, there is some variability in teaching loads from department to

department and from colleague to colleague. The following plots summarize the department-to-

department variability by showing the average teaching load (across all three measures) for each

department, grouped by division, across time. These average teaching loads are comprised of quite

disparate values on the three component measures. (For the sake of brevity, individual departments’

preps, hours, and enrollments are not displayed here, but we will be sharing those data with chairs.)

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Departments thus have different ways of achieving the same teaching load. One central point here is

the extent to which a number of departments’ loads do converge on “1.0,” the expected load. A second

central point, however, is how data such as these enable us to pursue greater equity in teaching when

there are disparities. The TLGs allow “apples to apples” comparisons of actual to expected teaching that

can help to reveal, for example, when a given department is teaching far above the target range and

might require additional staffing.

Chairs and directors can similarly make “apples to apples” comparisons in assigning teaching

schedules to individuals within their departments and programs, and recent practice has been for EAC to

review teaching plans annually, as well. The TLGs thus make it possible for chairs and/or the committee

to discover if there are outliers within a department, and to take steps to relieve an overloaded

colleague or shift more teaching to a colleague who has been under-assigned.

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In examining the data on the individual level, we thought it was important to check whether

teaching loads varied systematically by faculty rank or by full- versus partial-FTE status. We wanted to

make sure that no subset of colleagues was bearing an unfair share of the faculty’s teaching

responsibilities as a whole. We therefore plotted teaching loads by rank, as shown here.

The plots show that most variability in preps, hours, and enrollments by rank is balanced out when

looking at the average across all three measures. The line for full-time lecturers/instructors does show a

slightly higher average proportion than the other three faculty ranks.

We performed a similar analysis to compare whether part-time and full-time colleagues are

teaching roughly equally. To exclude part-time instructors who teach just a course or two, and to focus

instead on those with more substantial commitments to the college, we defined part-time as those with

0.5 – 0.8 FTE for a given year, and compared to those with 1.0 FTE for the year. Those plots are

displayed below, and show the mean and median average proportions (across all three measures)

tracking very closely for the full and partial FTE groups.

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Comparing across years, we appear overall to be teaching just a bit less under our current TLGs

than we were in the old IU system. The evidence for this is in the summary data shown below. A few

points are worth noting. First, this kind of analysis involves revisiting teaching that was performed

under one set of guidelines and expectations, and counting it as if it had been performed under the

current guidelines. The data therefore have to be interpreted cautiously. Second, applying today’s TLGs

to the teaching data from the IU period shows that our teaching during the IU period actually comes out

a bit above the current TLGs, whereas teaching since then comes out a bit below. For example,

depending on which faculty are included, the average teaching proportion from the IU period ranged

from 1.02 to 1.04, whereas the average teaching proportion under the current TLGs ranged from 0.97 to

1.00.

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The slight reduction in teaching since the implementation of our current TLGs is consistent with the

reduced number of Winter Term courses that we are now offering relative to the number that visitors

are offering. In some cases, the TLGs helped departments discover that they were teaching beyond the

target numbers of preps, hours, and enrollments in their regular fall and spring offerings, and the

flexibility of the TLGs allowed them to reduce their Winter Term teaching to achieve loads that were

within range. In other cases, the absence of an explicit one-on/one-off requirement for Winter Term

teaching has simply led to a thinning of our own WT offerings. This circumstance raises the question of

whether employing more outside teachers at additional expense is what we want for our Winter Term,

as well as the question of whether or how to address the inequity in some departments participating in

Excluding faculty with WT release for New Faculty Seminar (0.7 FTE)

2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 Pre TLG Avg Post TLG Avg

Preps 4.67 4.59 4.55 4.40 4.37 4.50 4.60 4.42

Hours 19.94 19.58 19.30 18.64 18.14 18.55 19.61 18.44

Enrollments 91.60 88.93 86.22 85.87 84.66 80.62 88.92 83.72

Average Ratio 1.055 1.032 1.013 0.989 0.973 0.976 1.03 0.98

Median Prep 5 4.25 4.33 4 4 4.25 4.53 4.08

Median Hours 19 19 18 17 17 18 18.67 17.33

Median Enroll 88 88 83 85 80.5 77.5 86.33 81.00

Median Ratio 1.019 1.014 1.000 0.967 0.946 0.964 1.01 0.96

Including faculty with WT release for New Faculty Seminar as 1.0 FTE


Preps 4.63 4.56 4.51 4.39 4.33 4.44 4.57 4.39

Hours 19.70 19.42 19.08 18.54 18.04 18.25 19.40 18.28

Enrollments 90.52 88.39 85.76 85.08 84.44 80.44 88.22 83.32

Average Ratio 1.043 1.024 1.005 0.984 0.968 0.965 1.02 0.97

Median Prep 4.50 4.21 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.17 4.24 4.06

Median Hours 19 19 18 17 17 18 18.67 17.33

Median Enroll 87.5 88 82 84.5 80 76 85.83 80.17

Median Ratio 1.015 1.004 0.985 0.963 0.941 0.952 1.00 0.95

All Faculty (FTE 1.0 equivalent, new faculty seminar release counted as 0.7 FTE)


Preps 4.64 4.55 4.56 4.51 4.40 4.51 4.58 4.47

Hours 19.48 19.36 19.71 18.81 18.48 18.83 19.52 18.71

Enrollments 91.78 91.95 92.70 88.30 88.38 88.27 92.14 88.32

Average Ratio 1.044 1.036 1.046 1.009 0.995 1.010 1.04 1.00

Median Prep 4.65 4.5 4.65 4.5 4.166667 4.5 4.60 4.39

Median Hours 18.675 18 18 17.5 17 18 18.23 17.50

Median Enroll 88 87 88 87 84 86 87.67 85.67

Median Ratio 1.015 1.007 1.015 0.982 0.978 0.991 1.01 0.98

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Winter Term, and some not. Revisiting the role and costs of WT might be worth discussing by future

EACs and the faculty at large.

To summarize our quantitative examination of the data, then, we found it largely reassuring. As

a faculty, we are teaching by and large in the expected ranges, and the three measures are balancing out

as planned. Predictably, there is some variability in loads across departments and across colleagues, but

the TLGs succeed in making these loads directly comparable to one another and to a shared standard, so

that inequities can be identified and addressed. We are teaching on the whole just a bit less than before

the TLGs went into effect, with implications for Winter Term, but taken on the whole, the data are

largely reassuring from a quantitative standpoint.

From a qualitative standpoint, by contrast, colleagues’ day to day experiences of the TLGs paint

a different picture. On a survey of chairs and directors last year regarding the TLGs, a number reported

that the teaching in their departments/programs did not change much with the new TLGs, but that the

new system was overly complicated. They commented on the tedious, non-intuitive work of mapping

colleagues’ actual teaching onto the measurement dimensions to compute teaching loads. As a

committee that computes and reviews many such loads each year, (and especially this year while we

were reviewing the TLGs), their experience resonates with us. The TLGs do make teaching loads difficult

to compute, and while we have formulas and spreadsheets that can potentially make it a bit easier, we

have no robust software to fully automate the computations at the individual level for faculty

colleagues, at the department level for chairs and directors, or at the college level for elected

committees and academic administrators.

Perhaps as a function of the TLGs’ complexity and specificity, our focus as a faculty has seemed

to turn more to the accounting of our teaching than was the case before. Admittedly anecdotal

evidence – but relatively frequent and with consistent themes – suggests that we are thinking and

talking more about what “counts” and for how much. To give one example, supervising student

research projects has always been a normal part of teaching at Middlebury and was accepted as part of

our roles as professors at a liberal arts college, without any explicit mention of it in the IU system of

counting. In recent years, however, perhaps because the TLGs have so specifically quantified so many

aspects of our teaching, we frequently hear colleagues lament that they “get zero teaching credit” for

supervising such projects, even though no credit has been taken away (and on the contrary, bankable

credit for 0700 projects has been added).

Alongside, and perhaps reflecting, this attunement to accounting for teaching – and despite the

quantitative successes of the TLGs – a number of legitimate questions regarding various provisions of

the TLGs have persisted. The most salient among these have been questions of whether multiple

sections of the same course should be credited with multiple preps, whether labs are being counted

appropriately, whether courses designated “College Writing” (CW) are dis-incentivized because of their

low enrollments and should earn additional credit, whether team-teaching should be counted

differently, and, as noted above, whether 0500 and 0700 projects are appropriately recognized. Finally,

there are some departments for which the TLGs are described as a mismatch. This is particularly the

case for departments whose courses do not involve labs as defined in the TLGs, but do involve time-

intensive, studio- or performance-based instruction. As a committee, we are interested in any

discussion that helps us achieve valid measures of teaching, and it matters to us whether or not the

TLGs are accurately capturing what we do – even though we are also acutely aware of the effect that

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any change to the TLGs could have on computed teaching loads; on the other hand, we regret that the

TLGs have invited this focus on accounting and its attendant anxieties, and would like to see us all move

away from a focus on “what is counted how” and toward a focus on what is pedagogically best for

students.

Recommendations

In terms of trying to recommend a path forward with respect to the TLGs, we therefore find

ourselves in a complicated position. We believe the TLGs are working very well as a measurement tool.

They provide valuable information to individual colleagues and to chairs in planning future teaching, and

they give us a shared benchmark for distinguishing a load from an overload. They are also one of the

important pieces of information, among others, we use when we evaluate staffing proposals, as they

help us see to what extent a department or program is over-stretched. At the same time, they seem to

be overly complicated and damaging to morale, luring us to think in terms of credit earned instead of

education provided, much the way our students are sometimes lured to think in terms of grades instead

of learning. And finally, there are specific provisions in the TLGs about which we are torn: they might be

worth revisiting to come to a closer approximation of a true measure of teaching, but to revisit them

might pull us yet deeper into an accounting perspective. What then, shall we do?

We think of this as a two-pronged question: What should we do with respect the TLGs

themselves (i.e., how we count)?, and What should we do with respect to our day-to-day experience of

them (i.e., where our focus is, and what role we want them to have in our work)? We lay out below, for

the full faculty’s consideration, a variety of possible paths forward. We recognize that the first question

(the TLGs themselves) is ultimately a matter for administrators and trustees, but we believe that our

input as a faculty is important; and that the second question (their role in our work) is entirely in our

hands.

With respect to the TLGs themselves, the obvious possibilities are to keep them the same, adjust

them, or overhaul them. Keeping them the same would involve embracing the current TLGs as an

imperfect, but useful, way of accounting for our teaching. Adjusting them would involve studying some

or all of the known issues (i.e., multiple sections of same course, labs, CW courses, team-teaching,

independent work, impact on WT, and studio- or performance-based courses), proposing alternate

means of accounting for them, and modeling the impact of such adjustments on teaching loads and on

total teaching at the college. The focus of such adjustments would be on achieving a more accurate

accounting of our work as teachers. We now have several years’ experience with the TLGs that we could

bring to bear on the related discussions. Overhauling the TLGs would involve a wholesale rethinking

aimed largely at simplifying our currently-complicated system of accounting, even if that meant modest

tradeoffs in accuracy. For example, it might be possible to imagine a simpler system with two measures

(hours and enrollments) instead of three, since preps and hours are anyway closely related to one

another; or a system that treats all teaching time the same – whether lecture, lab, discussion, studio,

etc. – embracing that all teaching requires preparation and that colleagues in different disciplines teach

in the ways that make the most sense for their students. In the case of any overhaul, it would be best if

the simplified system could be tested using our current data. For example, re-computing our existing

teaching load data using a hypothetical two-measure system would allow us to model the impact of that

system.

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With respect to the role of the TLGs in our work and day-to-day experience, we have identified

multiple possible ways of reducing their salience and attendant frustrations and anxieties. Currently,

EAC reviews the teaching loads of every department and program annually, when the teaching plans for

the following year are submitted. It would be possible to reduce the frequency of that review to

perhaps every three or four years instead, or to rotate which departments are reviewed in which year.

It would also be possible to shift the focus of the teaching load review from questions of what each of

our loads will be in the coming year, to retrospective questions of how the load looks over the past few

years. That is, instead of examining the projected loads for the coming year, the TLGs could be used as a

“check back” on the health of the offerings within departments. Along a separate line of possibilities,

we have also discussed the possibility of department- or program-specific “templates” of sorts that

show the typical selection of courses for someone who is fully meeting the TLGs. For example, there

might be a department in which each faculty member typically meets the TLGs by teaching a 30-seat

introductory course, a 15-seat CW course at the 200-level, a 20-seat 300-level elective, and a senior

seminar, plus every other Winter Term. That could become the template for that department, and

individual faculty members could rest assured that if they use the template as a guide, they do not need

to repeatedly compute their teaching loads. Different departments’ and programs’ templates would

look different, and some might have multiple templates, such as one for full-FTE colleagues and one for

colleagues with a 0.2 reduction while serving as chair or on an elected committee, or one for colleagues

who teach in the rotation for a particular core course in the major and another for colleagues who do

not teach in that rotation. Finally, it is plausible that if there were an automated tool, like a faculty load

“dashboard,” where any of us could check our own load at any time, or do “what-if” scenarios to see

how our load would change with a given course change, that might remove any anxiety that is currently

associated with not knowing one’s own measured teaching load.

The options for the TLGs themselves (i.e., keep, adjust, overhaul) and the options for how we

live with them (i.e., reduce frequency, move to retrospective use, create departmental templates,

implement an automated tool) are not mutually exclusive categories. As we discussed them, we

developed a fondness for a hybrid model whereby the current TLGs are kept or adjusted, but used

mostly in the background by chairs and EAC as a tool for evaluating equity, and departmental templates

(as described above) are used as a simple, user-friendly way for each of us to know we are contributing

our fair share to the overall curriculum. We can envision a variety of other “mix and match” possibilities

among the options listed here, as well.

Our main recommendations are that we join in explicitly recognizing the distinction between the

value of the TLGs as a measurement tool and the risk of the TLGs as controlling our outlook on and

narrative about our teaching; and that we consider the possibilities listed above, plus others that have

not yet come to our attention, and decide on a way forward that allows us both to measure teaching

loads accurately in the interest of equity, and to focus on what is truly important in our teaching.

Finally, we have one recommendation specific to administrative colleagues, and that is to

implement software that can interface with Banner (and then its successor) and track faculty FTEs to

produce automated teaching load calculations.

Submitted by the members of the EAC:

Jason Arndt, Ian Barrow, Tom Van Order, Carrie Wiebe, Susan Watson

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Appendix

TLG data for faculty at 1.0 FTE during 2009-2010

Preps Ratio

Mean: 1.02

Median: 0.94

Minimum: 0.67

Maximum: 2.11

Standard Deviation: 0.21

Target value: 4.5 preps

Contact Hours Ratio

Mean: 1.09

Median: 1.06

Minimum: 0.61

Maximum: 2.83


Target value: 18 contact hours

Enrollments Ratio

Mean: 0.99

Median: 0.98

Minimum: 0.26

Maximum: 2.08


Target value: 90 students

Average Ratio

Mean: 1.04

Median: 1.03

Minimum: 0.67

Maximum: 1.68


Target value: 1.0 Below 80%/Above 120% 6%/21%

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Preps Ratio

Mean: 1.02

Median: 0.94

Minimum: 0.67

Maximum: 2.11



Contact Hours Ratio

Mean: 1.09

Median: 1.06

Minimum: 0.61

Maximum: 2.83



Enrollments Ratio

Mean: 0.99

Median: 0.98

Minimum: 0.26

Maximum: 2.08



Average Ratio

Mean: 1.04

Median: 1.03

Minimum: 0.67

Maximum: 1.68



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Preps Ratio

Mean: 1.01

Median: 0.96

Minimum: 0.44

Maximum: 1.89



Contact Hours Ratio

Mean: 1.07

Median: 1.00

Minimum: 0.61

Maximum: 2.25



Enrollments Ratio

Mean: 0.96

Median: 0.92

Minimum: 0.18

Maximum: 2.06



Average Ratio

Mean: 1.02

Median: 1.01

Minimum: 0.60

Maximum: 1.83



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Preps Ratio

Mean: 0.98

Median: 0.89

Minimum: 0.22

Maximum: 1.78



Contact Hours Ratio

Mean: 1.04

Median: 0.94

Minimum: 0.33

Maximum: 3.42



Enrollments Ratio

Mean: 0.95

Median: 0.94

Minimum: 0.29

Maximum: 1.98



Average Ratio

Mean: 1.00

Median: 0.98

Minimum: 0.30

Maximum: 2.25



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Preps Ratio

Mean: 0.97

Median: 0.89

Minimum: 0.50

Maximum: 1.79



Contact Hours Ratio

Mean: 1.01

Median: 0.94

Minimum: 0.62

Maximum: 2.22



Enrollments Ratio

Mean: 0.94

Median: 0.89

Minimum: 0.21

Maximum: 2.33



Average Ratio

Mean: 0.98

Median: 0.97

Minimum: 0.62

Maximum: 1.55



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Preps Ratio

Mean: 1.00

Median: 0.94

Minimum: 0.44

Maximum: 1.89



Contact Hours Ratio

Mean: 1.03

Median: 1.00

Minimum: 0.50

Maximum: 1.94


Target value: 18 hours

Enrollments Ratio

Mean: 0.90

Median: 0.86

Minimum: 0.11

Maximum: 2.21



Average Ratio

Mean: 0.99

Median: 0.98

Minimum: 0.60

Maximum: 1.66



Documents

EAC report to the faculty on Teaching Load Guidelines … Report.pdfEAC report to the faculty on Teaching Load Guidelines (TLGs) Submitted May 2017 Overview The TLGs were designed