Title: Policy on Assignment of Academic Credits
Date Approved: January 19, 2014
Effective Date: January 31, 2014
Responsible Officials: Provost, Deans
Date of Last Review: May 15, 2023
Relates to: Administrators, Faculty, Students
Individual schools will be responsible for maintaining archives of course syllabi.
Each school shall review its course offerings to ensure that the number of credit hours awarded is consistent with the effort requirements described in CWRU鈥檚 definition of a credit hour (copied below, as adopted by the CWRU Faculty Senate in April 2012), especially for courses that do not have a formal syllabus (e.g., independent study or research courses).
- The assignment of credit hours to a course occurs through a formal review process conducted at the appropriate levels of faculty governance.
- For courses in lecture format, one credit-hour represents the subject content that can be delivered in one academic hour of contact time each week for the full duration of one academic semester, typically fourteen weeks along with a final examination period. For undergraduate courses, one credit-hour also includes associated work that can be completed by a typical student in 2-3 hours of effort outside the classroom. For graduate and professional courses taught in lecture format, 3-4 hours of outside work is expected for each academic hour of contact time.
- For courses taught in other than lecture format (e.g., seminars, laboratories, independent study, clinical work, research, etc.), one credit-hour represents an amount of content and/or student effort that in aggregate is no less than that described in (2) above.
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