Methodologies to Determine Class Sizes for Fair Faculty Work Load in Web Courses

This paper presents two modeling approaches that can be used to determine student class sizes for instructors who teach Web-based courses. The methodologies act to provide assurance to faculty that they will not have to compromise quality of instruction when teaching a Web course, nor have to sacrifice time away from research or service activities to develop and manage a Web course. These methodologies will also help department chairs plan student class size limitations to achieve “fairness” in asking instructors to adopt and teach Web courses at their universities. The models are applied to actual Web course experience at a university to demonstrate their practicality. Results of the application revealed faculty processing efficiencies that are inherent in offering Webbased courses and efficacy of the modeling approach.