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