How to Deal with Excessive Teaching Responsibilities

Here are comments from survey respondents describing how, if at all, they have dealt with the issue of dealing with excessive teaching responsibilities.

• Our teaching load is common to our campus, so we just do the best we can within the limits we have.
• Suck it up, basically. My load has decreased since I first began and the dean and my colleagues know that for my first five years I worked probably harder than any but three or so of my colleagues. After returning from sabbatical, our core requirements changed and I have established myself as publishing more than almost anyone else so I am given very few committee appointments and now I have small classes, even though I have lots of different preparations. I spent my first five years preparing lesson plans: I spent about 8 hours per hour of class and wrote class plans for 10 classes, at about 50 hours/class. Now I change maybe six lessons each semester and I ask students in the upper-level classes to write research papers, which helps me stay current in some areas.
• I have a decent load. Can't complain. But I shall be moving to computerized quizzes/grading, at least on the daily reading assignments.
• Our teaching load is reasonable.
• Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency
• I haven't, though we are in the process of moving from a 4-4 to 3-3 load across the university.
• I've begged to be released for academic research. When that failed repeatedly, I watered down my courses so that I could spend less time grading (for students who could care less about this discipline) and more time writing. I also have to take quarters off at my own expense if I want to write which effectively means I lose 25% of my yearly salary to pursue academic work.
• We try to have faculty in the first year or two minimize the number of preps they offer. But soon enough, we have to develop 6 or more preps to offer on a rotating basis (our load is 3/2). We take steps to talk with another about enrollment limits, not burdening ourselves with too many time-consuming assignments in our classes, and try to divide the burdens of teaching courses across the different levels as evenly as we can. But we all value teaching very highly.
• Principally, by varying class formats and increasing the involvement of the students in framing and working for their own learning. The more they do and we oversee, the more enthusiastic they get. Disadvantage: only available to senior years.
• Learning to say no.
• Just shoulder through and work harder. No relief
• Since our university's enrollment is shrinking, our problems are perhaps unfamiliar to many. As our university and program shrink, we are increasingly convinced that admissions processes (in which we play no role) are bringing us poorly prepared students whose level of preparation forces us to simplify course content and to reduce our expectations of students. Sometimes we add whimpering and desperate job searches to our simplification of core course content.
• We've not been effective in this regard. We have a 4-4 teaching load. We've had many discussions with a sympathetic, but unwilling to make changes, administration.
• Our professional development process now, at my behest, will include the possibility of applying for limited release time in order to complete large-scale projects like monographs, etc.
• I don't have excessive teaching responsibilities.
• Grading rubrics help a great amount, especially in decreasing the number of students who come to office hours. Several short essays (3-5 pages) rather than research papers. I don't know; I just work my butt off.
• Our best innovation has been to share the senior-thesis load, spreading it evenly while taking students' preferences for mentors into account.
• Multiple choice tests. Browsing through final papers in 5 minutes to give them a grade.
• Sadly, I barely know how to address this! One thing that has helped a bit is the ability to teach several sections of a course back to back (three sections of intro. from 8:00 - 11:00, for instance), thus freeing up large blocks of time during other parts of the day. Of course, our administration has just curtailed our ability to do this.
• This is tightly connected with the problem of securing faculty
• not much possible here--administration has higher priorities elsewhere
• Using more formative assessments, and on-line tools whereby students can "check" their work with each other and learn from each other's work.
• Not a concern.
• I have not found any good strategies to deal with this. I would be interested to know what faculty at other, similar institutions have done.
• I try my best to reduce my amount of grading -- some assignments I don't grade at all, just check them off. I don't grade final exams -- just check to see if they pass or don't. I use a lot of group work and presentations in class -- effective pedagogy, and takes less prep time for me.
• I got better migraine medication
• I am new and haven't started discussing these things.
• I wish I had more to offer than "I teach too much," but that's all I've got. I teach an overload every year. I make this fun for myself by teaching at least one course abroad every year.
• Teach two sections of same course same term where reasonable, steer some courses to partially support my research interests.
• There's not much I can do, given that the load is set by the institution.
• We have a 3-3 load, and the department head has a lighter load, so I'm not sure if the teaching responsibilities are excessive.
• Many Tanqueray & Tonics.
• Have to do it for the program. No real way to deal with it. The administration is more interested in science positions than staffing humanities.
• Not really a problem
• Although I teach 6 courses per year, each semester I teach two sections of one of those courses, so my teaching load is quite heavy. I try not to change courses too much, but I don't teach well if I'm bored, and I get bored when I teach the same thing over and over again (whether by not changing a particular course or by teaching too many sections of the same courses at a time). I avoid teaching summer school. I do little research or even class preparation during the school year. There is no time to read. Basically I feel as though I do everything at no more than 90% of my capacity. Cheerful stoicism gets me through.
• Apply for faculty release time. Rarely does it help due to lack of available faculty resulting in full-time faculty teaching overload courses.
• Reinforce with the Faculty Council the need to negotiate with the administration for a reduced teaching load from 4/4 eventually to 3/3, and take advantage of course-release opportunities.
• Many of the best liberal arts colleges have moved to a model of 32 courses for graduation, rather than a large state university model of about 120 credit hours (~40 courses). This would help reduced the number of courses a department would have to offer.
• Got funding to develop a new programme to alleviate some teaching responsibility.
• Duck and cover: Announce subjects that would not attract too many students, teach on Monday mornings and Friday afternoon.. Concentrate on majors.
• I am not teaching Philosophy at all.
• We don't deal with it; we put up with it.
• Coffee and good drink. Yoga. Cut corners when I can do so without obviously violating integrity.
• caffeine. I have dealt with it poorly, quite honestly. Better luck (and time management) next year.
• Complaining to administration...to no avail.
• Perhaps little or no way around this for adjunct faculty. We are given classrooms caps of 45 per class (four to five classes per semester, no teaching/student assistants), and have difficulty teaching in the way that we should with the workload. The only way to address this is to discuss concerns with our chair, or our union.
• Our college recently shifted to a 3/2 load, and that has helped a lot.
• weeping and lamentation
• I teach overload to make up for sub-standard salary, but even without overload I still have a 4-4 load (which is pretty substantial). Most of the efforts have been to lobby administrators; I serve on the Faculty Senate and this is one of our goals, and our administration seems somewhat receptive.
• did research on weekends.
• I tend to repeat lectures and try and find ways to use the same material semester to semester.
• I have started co-authoring a piece, and splitting the research work is helpful. But, generally there is no way to cope with onerous teaching duties (expect to shirk your duty).
• Minimizing preps as much as possible.