Analysis of Time Investment in Online Teaching: Log Diary
Approach
Alka Dwivedi, Anita Sengar, Manisha Solanki
School of Business, University of Petroleum& Energy Studies,
Energy Acres, Dehradun, India
+911352770137
adwivedi@ddn.upes.ac.in; asengar@ddn.upes.ac.in; ms_solanki@ddn.upes.ac.in
ABSTRACT
The present paper aims at analysing the time investment involved
in delivering blended and online courses and assess the increasing
work load of faculty in online and blended teaching environment.
For the study, twenty two faculty members from different
departments agreed to log their daily activities related to their
respective online and blended courses. The log diary data which
was collected over a period of one semester shows individual
variation in the performance of different activities by the
instructor. However, it also reflects considerable increase in the
time spent by the instructors in delivering online/blended courses.
This time is over and above the contact hours scheduled for the
class. Analyzing the time spent in different activities, clearly
shows that developing, delivering and administration of online
sessions increases the workload of instructors. Inferences are also
drawn regarding the changed skill set required for delivering
online courses as well as the changed expectations of the online
students. The paper suggests the need to review and rationalize
the work load of faculty members delivering online courses.
CCS Concepts
• Human-centered computing➝ User studies
Keywords
Online teaching, blended courses, log diary
1. INTRODUCTION
Increasing use of ICT in modern higher education is slowly but
surely changing the education landscape. Higher education
institutions are increasingly implementing e-learning in their
traditional and distance education programs. [5] In e-learning or
web based learning students interact with their courses online via
some technological platform. E-learning has two distinct formats
viz. Blended learning and online learning. A blended learning
environment uses real time or asynchronous online instructions
along with traditional onsite learning to meet the learning
objectives. [15]
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3369199.3369237
237
An online learning is the one in which the students access the
complete course through internet. Online courses do not involve
in-person interaction of the teacher and the student. The
communication in the course is done through an online medium.
Online learning is relatively new but rapidly growing within and
outside university setting. Enrolments in online courses are
increasing rapidly. More than thirty percent of higher education
students now take at least one course online [9]. 69.1 percent of
the primary academic leaders consider online learning significant
for their long term strategy. (onlinelearningconsortium.org/2015
survey). Given this context the faculty is increasingly expected to
develop and deliver quality online courses
2. OBJECTIVE
Online teaching differs from face to face teaching on a few
important parameters. [5]. One of the major elements of
difference is the investment of time required for delivering online
courses. Online teaching redefines faculty members‟ schedule. [16]
The present paper aims at in-depth analysis of the time invested
by the instructors on various activities and thus the increase in
workload of the faculty involved in delivering online courses.
3. METHODOLOGY
This study was conducted with the support of 22 instructors from
different departments of two different schools under a private
university in India. Each of these instructors was teaching a
different course. The online sessions of these courses were
delivered through Blackboard, the Learning Management System
(LMS) of the university.
Some of the courses considered for study were delivered in online
mode while others were taught in blended mode. The online
courses were taken by off-campus students. In blended courses the
students attended lectures in the classroom and were also required
to attend online sessions of the course on Blackboard. The student
strength varied from 40 to 350 in various courses. The digital
content of the course was uploaded on the blackboard at the start
of the semester. However, the instructors could make relevant
changes in the content by adding, deleting or modifying the basic
content provided on the LMS. As the course progressed, the
instructors could engage students in course related discussions and
assess their learning by creating quizzes/ tests and assignments.
The communication was done through online announcements on
Blackboard, emails or over phone. The students enrolled in
blended courses met their professor in class and could discuss
about the course in person during the office hours.
Log Diary: Most of the e-learning research focuses on the student
satisfaction and learning outcomes. Studies are also available
describing the perception of students and the faculty about e
learning. However, very few go into the nuances of e learning
showing what actually entails in online teaching. Such a nuanced
study is necessary to get a clearer picture of skill requirements for
online teaching and to understand what set of activities impact the
effectiveness of online teaching. An online instructor can collect
such detailed information only through daily logging of every
single activity. Therefore, log diary method was chosen to collect
the real time
After conducting preliminary discussions and interview with the
faculty about the activities required in online teaching, log diaries
were prepared. The daily log required data related to the course
development, course delivery and course administration and
troubleshooting. The log diaries captured only the work done in
the course outside the classroom. The time spent in the class or a
scheduled online lecture is to be understood as the timetabled
activity. The lag diaries recorded only the activities which were
done in addition to the timetabled sessions for the blended courses.
For online courses, the instructors were supported by a strong
operations team, which managed most of the interactions with the
students. Operations team communicated with the students and
provided them the support related to course administration.
Collecting data through detailed logs had its benefits as well as
disadvantages. On one hand, it was expected to get exhaustive
details of the instructor‟s daily activity in their online course at the
other end it was viewed as adding to the, already heavy, workload
of the instructors. Such data collection may also be apprehended
as monitoring of the daily activities of the instructors for
management purposes. Therefore, at the beginning of the semester
30 minute meeting was conducted with the instructors to explain
them the objectives of the study, distribute the log diaries and
clarify their doubts. During the semester, emails were sent to the
participants of the study gently reminding them to complete their
daily logs. The log diaries were collected at the end of the
semester.
Twenty-two, completely filled, diaries were considered for
analysis. It can be safely assumed that some of the data recorded
was based on guesstimates about how the time was spent. Some
responses were recorded as total time spent in the week in that
activity rather than the time spent in each day.
required the instructor to spend approximately 77 (36 + 41) hours,
which increases the workload by 113.89 percent.
In an online course, the presence of a strong operations team, in
addition to the IT staff, handled course development and
administration related issues. Since it also worked as the interface
between the faculty and students, the instructors were relieved of
query handling and trouble shooting in the case of off- campus
students. In an online course, the instructors were mainly involved
in the course delivery. On an average, each instructor spent 57.43
hours in course delivery in an online course.
4.2. Type of Activities
Course development activity usually entails creating digital
learning resources in text, audio and video formats. In many
instances, e-learning software is used to create interactive videos
and assessment exercises. In this study, the learning resources
were available on Blackboard for all the 22 courses. This content
was designed and developed before the start of the semester by
the faculty members with the support of IT staff and instructional
designer appointed for this purpose. For online courses, also, the
content was made available on the Blackboard and the operations
team supported the instructors throughout the semester.
The data showed that course development took 330 hours in the
entire semester, which was 15 hours per instructor.
Course delivery per instructor was calculated to be 18.7 hours and
course administration issues took 7.8 hours per instructor in the
semester. Creating assignments and assessments took
considerable time in the online mode.
Table 1.Total and Average Time Spent per Instructor in
Course Development Activities
Time Spent
Activities (in minutes)
Total Average
Developing digital content 5585 253.9
Creating Assignment 4900 222.7
Creating Test 3405 154.8

4. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS Creating Discussion Thread 1570 71.4

The data was entered into excel sheets, coded and analyzed to Recording Lectures 4340 197.3
understand the activities performed and the time spent on each of
Total 19800 900
them while delivering online sessions. The analysis was done at
three different levels viz. the level of course design, the type of Time in Hours 330 15
activities and at the level of administrative positions of the
instructors. The data showed individual variations in the type of
activities and the time spent by the faculty at all levels. Table2. Total and Average Time Spent per Instructorin
Course Delivery Activities
4.1. Course Design Course Delivery Activities Time Spent (in minutes)
Out of the 22 courses considered for the study, 14 were delivered
in blended mode and eight were taught in online mode. In a Total Average
blended course the instructors spent an average of 40.8 hours in Evaluation/Assessment 11465 521.2
online activities. This included revising and updating the content,
Creating Announcement 1219 55.5
communicating with the students and assessment. It also includes
the time instructors spent on helping students sort out the Communicating with 3059 139.1
technical issues on Blackboard by coordinating with the IT staff. Students
This time was in addition to the time tabled contact hours and Searching for relevant online 8931 406
other scheduled activities in the course. A contact hour is “a unit content
of measure that represents an hour of scheduled instructions given
Total 24674 1121.55
to students” [10]. The courses which required 36 hours of
teaching for requisite credits, when delivered in blended mode Time in Hours 411.233 18.7

238
 Table 3. Total and Average Time Spent per Instructor in
Course Administration Activities
Course Administration
Activities Time Spent (in minutes)
Total Average
Answering students question 3557 161.7
about course
Dealing with Course 3680 165
Administration
Interacting with student in 2478 112.6
person regarding the
online/blended course
Any other Activity not 620 28.2
mentioned Above
Total 10285 467.5
Time in Hours 171.417 7.8
4.3. Administrative Positions
Data was further analyzed with respect to the administrative
positions. Instructors were divided into three categories. The
instructors who were heading a function or a department were
grouped together as HODs. Other group which coordinated one or
other courses in the school, along with teaching was named as
Coordinators and remaining were the Lecturers whose primary
responsibility was teaching. The average number of hours spent
by HODs in online teaching was 37.11 hours. Course coordinators
spent an average of 47.39 hours and lecturers spent 37.64 hours in
online teaching. This time was calculated considering both the
online and blended courses.
The above findings show that the online teaching places high
demands on time of the faculty and increases their workload to
almost twice that of the face-to-face course. This should be seen
along with the requirements of additional IT related skill sets. In
the traditional setting, the instructors use subject matter expertise
to engage students and achieve learning objectives, In case of
online teaching, the instructor requires IT skills to develop,
deliver and administer the course. Mulig and Rhame [9] suggest
that the professor should seek help from IT for this purpose. In
addition to the above, time management and planning is required
to meet the students‟ expectation of 24x7 availability of the
instructor to respond to their queries [7]
5. DISCUSSION
It is well known that introduction of e-learning often increases the
staff time spent on tutoring [6,8] to an extent of doubling the
workload of the instructors as compared to the traditional
classroom format [12]. Using content uploaded on Blackboard in
blended courses did not save time in the classroom as the students
requested revision of the online topic in face to face class.
Answering student queries on Blackboard did not benefit from
economy of scale. Students posted similar questions on the
Blackboard and expected individual answers rather than
communicating together as a single class.
Due to tremendous interest and growth in online enrolments,
faculty are being asked to develop and deliver online courses.
However, as the present paper shows, developing and teaching
online course can be very time consuming. Developed courses
need to be revised and updated regularly. The specific forms of
communication and collaboration in online settings affect the time
239
demands placed on instructors; online courses create an additional
and significant time burden for instructors [14].
Studies have examined the workloads and stress levels and the
anti-educational consequences of these. [3, 4] Online teaching
has many implications for faculty work life and faculty needs
greater support in course development [11]. Management needs to
review and rationalize the work load of faculty As online course
development, delivery and administration involves massive
component of IT a strong, efficient and dedicated IT support is
necessary for optimum utilization of faculty‟s time and efforts.
6. CONCLUSION
Published studies highlight the advantages of e-learning for both
the students and the faculty. With increasing number of students,
enrolling for online courses it becomes imperative that the process
of online teaching is understood in its entirety. Expected benefits
from e-learning systems can be reaped only when provisions are
made for the specific requirements of this new form of teaching.
As Simpson [13] rightly reminds that teachers should be seen as
navigators of information not the gatekeepers of knowledge and
professionalism, reflective practice and scholarship should remain
central to the teacher‟s role.
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
These results are a part of the research funded by Laureate
Education Inc. The research aims at identifying the factors which
improve teaching effectiveness in higher education in the context
of e-learning environment. The authors of this paper are co-
investigators in the study.
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