Date or reference Workload allocation and balancing: the Salford model UCML workshop, 13 March 2009 Janet Lloyd School of Languages University of Salford

Purpose of workload balancing To record and quantify the full range of academic activity To ensure that work is fairly distributed among available (academic) staff The “full range of academic activity” includes: teaching and teaching-related activity (preparation, delivery, marking, supervision) research administrative roles enterprise activity

Quantifying activity Standard annual full-time workload = 100 points 100 points = 1650 hours ‘Size’ of activities quantified in terms of the amount of notional time needed to undertake them Relatively easy to assign a ‘size’ to various specific activities, for example, administrative or management roles

Quantifying teaching activity Workload associated with the delivery of modules is quantified using three categories One co-efficient set to determine the intensity of the teaching load (sensitive to credit rating, but not student numbers) Another set to determine the intensity of the marking load (sensitive to both credit rating and student numbers)

Quantifying teaching activity: problems Relevance of credit rating to workloads? (Credit rating is a notional unit of student input into learning; it is not a notional unit of staff input into teaching) Only three categories of module; insufficient given the diversity of provision

Quantifying teaching activity: our solution Move to ‘block’ methodology Greater transparency Greater flexibility (not limited to 3 types of module or tied to credit rating) Separation of preparation & delivery from marking Ability to add extra groups where needed

Advantages and issues Flags up where staff are +/- 10% of the full allocation On the basis of objective data, balancing can take place Transparency (everyone “pulling their weight”) Does not account for peaks and troughs Non-researchers/those without management or admin roles = heavy teaching loads