judehigdon

I think one of the best uses of this will be to put up "template" examples of approaches to re-design a course. Like the example in class today of shifting time from one class of employee to another, etc.

It almost seems more effective as a way to think about workload than it is to think about course cost or efficiencies. For example, if some TAs are spending fewer hours with the same responsibilities, what are they doing right? Or wrong? I would try to get at transformation by thinking about instructor efficiency and efficacy.

interesting workshop. We have tried to ascertain the cost of instruction for our department, and have presented the costs to our faculty

I am not quite convinced about what it can tell us besides the actual costs . . . that sounds silly, but I didn't get real useful information out of it. I worry people will try to cut costs using the spreadsheet and not think about education values. I would be interested in hearing how the study goes about running the two different class environments this fall.

I think it will allow us to look at a general approach to courses and costs. If we can reduce faculty time committments for each course, can we see increases in research productivity (and perhaps faculty satisfaction)?

I think that the U needs to be proactive about shaping the terms of this discussion, especially around institutional values and the nature of academic labor, as a tool like this could be deployed in a very reductive way by forces outside the University.

I actually don't know yet. I need more time to process this tool.

I have an inherent dislike of the scale that this is on because it strikes me as something that might be much easier to misuse in an educational context than to use well.

I guess my "visceral response" is to some of the discussion. I have visions of instructors out hawking their courses in order to get enough students to cover their salaries! Pity the instructor of a small course....

While I understand the focus on the course, I also feel that there may be more fruitful ways of addressing costs that look at a larger unit.

And I hope you'll invite us all back to talk about the "how to do it" part of the process.

Instructtional values are implicit in the categories and allocations.

I need more time to play with this and think of how it would affect how I would construct a course.

Actually I did not find the costs that resulted from the analysis to be surprising. The analysis shows that most of the costs to run a dept/college are indirect.

The ICC worksheets are a great way to itemize per course costs and force faculty & admins to really think about actual course costs. The issues related to subjective or central costs and how to build them in to the cost structure would be interesting to further discuss.

*Any* starting point for this conversation is a good place. Administrators are increasingly being asked to produce an accounting for various audiences. I believe an honest accounting of any course design/management would actually surprise people and benefit us not only as places to become more efficient but also just *how* efficient we already are (contrary to what some believe).

I think the ICC tool provides a great starting place for anyone who is interested in articulating the cost for a course and is not sure where to begin. It sparks a great deal of discussion where greater understanding among a course team, dept., college, university can happen.

Those who manage budgets would especially appreciate viewing a completed ICC worksheet for a course. Getting buy-in from a variety of stakeholders to make major changes is important. This provides one more piece of data to a proposal to revise a course.

We need a tool to compare cost and achievement (in an ideal world)

What Barbara said was done in the Vet School (coming up with an accounting of what it costs the department for faculty and presenting that to the faculty) is a common practice in community colleges, in my experience.

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