Weekly semester hour

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A weekly semester hour ( SWS for short ) is used at universities to indicate the time the student spends on a course or to measure the lecturer's teaching load . The indication "1 SWS" means that the corresponding course is taught for 45 minutes a week for the duration of the average lecture time of a semester. On average, because at many universities the lecture period in the winter semester is longer (often 16 weeks) than the lecture period in the summer semester (often 12 weeks).

As a measure of the effort of the students are increasingly credits used. Academic achievements are evaluated there from the perspective of the demand side and no longer on the basis of the course hours offered.

Germany

Courses

A time specification of 4 SWS for a subject means that during a semester you can study this subject for four lectures of 45 minutes each week (three hours). There are also events that are only taught for half a semester. For such events, the specification of 4 SWS means that during this time six hours per week are used for this subject. Since the average lecture time is 14 weeks, the course specified as 4 SWS has a total of 42 hours (14 × 4 × 45 minutes). This does not take into account whether there may be no lessons on individual days because it is a public holiday.

Hours per week in the semester reflect the specific number of hours of attendance in a course; the preparation and follow-up are not taken into account. Usually, at least twice the actual attendance time per event should be included as working time ( workload ) for students. In simple terms, this means that a one-hour lecture requires a little more than an hour of preparation and follow-up time.

Most universities recommend a total load of 20 to 25 hours per week for university events.

In laws and ordinances, the unit SWS is sometimes incorrectly used as a rate, i.e. the amount per time for recurring teaching expenses / obligations. In this case, it often remains unclear whether one speaks of SWS per semester or SWS per year.

Teaching load

The procedure for determining the workload of the lecturers is different. One assumes 14–15 weeks per semester (average from approx. 16 weeks in the winter semester and 12–14 weeks in the summer semester, depending on the federal state). This means 14 | 15 * 0.75 = approx. 11 hours of attendance time per SWS. The content-related preparation and the organizational effort are disputed. In the past, 4 working hours per SWS were calculated here, corresponding to 56–60 hours of working time; With a deduction of 8 SWS, this would correspond to an annual working time of 960 hours, i.e. almost exactly half the time that a full-time employee works in the year - which was the goal so that there is still time for general organization, university politics and science. Today (depending on the federal state) 9 SWS credits are common. It should not be possible to write a credit over 16 hours per week, as it corresponds to 1920 hours per year (more is politically desirable in some cases, but then the preparation time has to be shortened). The SWS are charged differently in the teaching load, depending on the type of event, in order to take into account the average preparation and follow-up effort of the lecturers, because their contractual working hours also include these times in addition to being present in the courses. It is assumed that the examinations in the course are primarily linked to the theoretical courses. Therefore, higher credit factors are used as a basis for these types of courses. One SWS in an internship is therefore only counted towards the teaching load with 0.5 SWS. This is based on the controversial assumption that one hour of internship represents less work for the lecturer than one hour of seminar and is legally based on the Capacity Ordinance of 1975 (see e.g. the KapVO Hessen). The recognition is even lower for excursions. Here, only one third is counted for an hour. Provided it is irrelevant how it is conveyed for the teaching of a course content, the most economical form of communication for the lecturers would be the lecture, because it allows the largest groups of participants. Since this assumption does not apply to all course content, a course is made up of different types of courses. As part of the capacity calculation, it is then possible to calculate how many students can be admitted for a specific course with a fixed number of lecturers.

Web links

Wiktionary: weekly semester hour  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

swell

  1. See the explanation of the timetable creation of the University of Duisburg-Essen
  2. See also Friedhelm Hülshoff / Rüdiger Kaldewey: Studying with success. Study organization and work techniques , 3rd edition, Munich 1993, p. 116
  3. See the information on the scheduling of the Ruhr University Bochum
  4. See Hartmut Bauer / Manfred Braun / Jörg Tenckhoff: JA-Sonderheft für Studienanfänger , 5th edition, Neuwied 1992, p. 5
  5. KapVO Hessen