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At Arizona State, another large geology program (we have three thousand take intro geology each year), we had the same issue and did cut the lab back to 2 hours. I actually worked fine, but you have to cut out less essential things. We have two dedicated lab rooms, so there is no setup time. We increased the number of labs each assistant taught by one. To further address the problem, we also created an online lab (at the University's "suggestion") and it now has almost 2,000 students each year, in addition to our in-person labs. That's our experience. Steve Reynolds [log in to unmask] From: GEOEDUCATION RESEARCH INTEREST GROUP [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Maureen Leshendok Sent: Wednesday, September 18, 2013 11:30 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Seeking information about intro geology lab duration Speaking as a former lab instructor, no, no, no! Two hours, what with set up and clean up, simply isn't possible. It's not just missing instruction time, it's the entire arc of the instructional period. Good luck! Maureen Leshendok Truckee Meadows Community College Reno, Nevada On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Glenn Robert Dolphin <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Good day geoscience ed colleagues, I am in the geology department at the University of Calgary and it's the biggest geology program in North America (and quite possibly the world), graduating a couple hundred geo majors per year. Anyway, our intro course has about 500 students in two sections. The chair of the department wants to decrease the lab time from three hours to two hours. This would alleviate scheduling (currently labs run in two rooms, Tuesday - Thursday, 8AM to 8 PM straight through, not to mention the nearly 20 TAs in charge of the labs). Decreasing the length of lab time will also cause a savings of about $70 - 80K for the department per year. Anyway, as the new guy at the department meeting where this has been an on-going discussion, I brought up that decreasing the lab by one hour is effectively eliminating 16% of the instructional time (and the most hands-on portion to boot!), and asked if it was a wise choice to make, regardless of the financial aspects. The department head (and he is a reasonable person) suggested that I do some research to see if we could be more efficient with the course "delivery" so that that loss of an hour does not impact the learning of the student. That was a long preamble to this question I pose to you: Are you aware of any work done along these lines of streamlining a course and still getting reasonable student learning gains? Or, really anything that can help inform this decision? I would appreciate any insight and/or direction toward some literature dealing with issues like this. Thanks for your time. Best regards, Glenn Glenn Dolphin, PhD Tamaratt Teaching Professor Department of Geoscience Earth Science 118 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, T2N 1N4 403.220.6025 [log in to unmask] Anyone can slay a dragon, he told me, but try waking up every morning & loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero. -Brian Andreas -- Maureen Leshendok Elizabeth Sturm Library Reference Department Truckee Meadows Community College 7000 Dandini Blvd. Reno, NV 89512 775-674-7602 (Reference Desk) 775-673-7011 (Office) <mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask] Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice. --Will Durant Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into. -- Oliver Hardy