The study aims at investigating the perceptions of both academics and students on student workload in Credit Hour System at the Faculty of Education at Alexandria University (Egypt). It uses the wider international experience of higher education reform, including Tuning Africa Project — II, to propose implications for policy and practice on how the real work hours needed by a student to achieve the learning outcomes specified in the curriculum and to pass a course or module are adequately estimated and to contribute to the definition of the basis of a Credit System for Africa. The data have been collected through questionnaires administered to 26 participants: 11 academics (one academic per course) and 15 students (each student surveyed 11 times across all courses of the Professional Diploma in Education). The main findings show significant differences between the perceptions of academics and students on student workload almost across all courses, where students’ estimation of the number of hours needed to complete the independent work during the semester were much higher than that of academics except for fieldwork (site visits). The independent workload as estimated by academics is 62% of students’ estimation. Significant differences were found between the perceptions of students on the number of hours required for each type of independent work across different courses except “preparation and follow-up work for scheduled classes”. The highest average of estimations of the number of hours was given to course N. 11 (World Trends in Quality Assurance Systems); whereas the lowest average was given to course N. 5 (Assessment of Quality in Educational Institutions) across all different types of independent work. Only 36.4% of academics have taken students’ feedback on workload into consideration when planning the workload for their courses. It was also found that 92% of students were not informed about the number of hours planned for independent work at the beginning of the course. In addition, 88% of students were not asked to express their feedback about workload. These findings indicate that there are no unified regulations among academics to the estimation of student workload. It is also made clear that the process of estimating student workload in Credit Hour System at Alexandria University is staff-centred rather than student-oriented as the majority of academics follow traditional methodologies in the estimation of student workload. It is also enunciated clearly that there is marginal coordination between academics teaching in the same programme. It can be concluded that student voice about their workload is not adequately considered as their feedback is not taken into consideration, which can be interpreted in light of the absence of a “paradigm shift” from staff-centred to student oriented approaches to the estimation of student workload.

中文翻译：

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亚历山大大学学分制和学生工作量：可能的范式转变

这项研究的目的是调查埃及和亚历山大大学教育学院学分制中学者和学生对学生工作量的看法。它利用高等教育改革的广泛国际经验，包括“调整非洲项目II”，就学生如何实现课程中规定的学习成果并通过课程或课程所需要的实际工作时间，对政策和实践提出建议。对模块进行了充分的估计，并有助于定义非洲学分制的基础。数据是通过向26名参与者（包括11名学者（每门课程一名学者）和15名学生（每位学生在教育专业文凭的所有课程中接受调查11次））进行的问卷调查收集的。主要发现表明，几乎在所有课程中，学者和学生对学生工作量的看法之间存在显着差异，其中，学生对本学期完成独立工作所需的小时数的估计远远高于学者，但实地调查除外（实地访问）。学者估计的独立工作量是学生估计的62％。在不同的课程中，除了“预定课程的准备和后续工作”外，学生对每种类型的独立工作所需的小时数的看法存在显着差异。课程N的估计小时数的最高平均值是N. 11（质量保证体系的世界趋势）；而平均最低的是课程N。各种独立工作类型的第5部分（教育机构的质量评估）。在计划课程的工作量时，只有36.4％的学者将学生对工作量的反馈考虑在内。还发现92％的学生在课程开始时未获悉计划进行独立工作的小时数。此外，没有要求88％的学生表达他们对工作量的反馈。这些发现表明，学者之间没有统一的规定来估算学生的工作量。还很清楚，亚历山大大学学分制中学生工作量的估算过程是以员工为中心的，而不是以学生为中心，因为大多数学者在估算学生工作量时都遵循传统的方法。还清楚地表明，在同一课程中教学的学者之间存在边际协调。可以得出结论，没有充分考虑学生对工作量的声音，因为未考虑他们的反馈，这可以根据缺乏从以员工为中心的方法向以学生为中心的方法的“范式转换”进行解释。学生的工作量。