Student Engagement Inventory (SEI) (policy)

To aid in assigning student credit hours uniformly to courses in the curriculum, the UOCC inventories the amount of student engagement in a course using the Student Engagement Inventory.

Departments preparing course proposals are to complete the SEI on CourseLeaf when deciding how many SCH units to request for a proposed course.

Undergraduate courses graduate courses
Under the UO quarter system, each undergraduate credit reflects approximately thirty hours of student engagement. Therefore, a 3-credit course would engage students for approximately 90 hours total among the activities listed below, whereas a 4-credit course would entail approximately 120 hours of activities in which students are actively engaged in learning over the course of the term. Graduate students are expected to perform work of higher quality and quantity, typically with forty hours of student engagement for each student credit hour. Therefore, a 3-credit graduate course would typically engage students approximately 120 hours; a 4-credit graduate course may be expected to entail approximately 160 hours for the average student for whom the course is designed.

EXAMPLE: Please identify the number of hours a typical or average student would expect to spend in each of the following activities:

Educational activity hours student engaged Explanatory comments (if any):
Course attendance    
Assigned readings    
Project    
Writing assignments    
Lab or workshop    
Field work, experience    
Online interaction    
Performances, creative activities    
TOTAL HOURS:    

Definition of terms:

TERM DEFINITION
Course attendance Actual time student spends in class with instructor or GTF
Assigned readings Estimated time it takes for a student with average reading ability to read all assigned readings
Writing assignments Estimated time it takes for a student with average writing ability to produce a final, acceptable written product as required by the assignment
Project Estimated time a student would be expected to spend creating or contributing to a project that meets course requirements (includes individual and group projects)
Lab or workshop Actual time scheduled for any lab or workshop activities that are required but are scheduled outside of class hours
Field work, experience Actual or estimated time a student would spend or be expected to spend engaged in required field work or other field-based activities
Online activities Actual or estimated time a student would spend or be expected to spend engaged in online activities directly related to the course, separate from online research required for projects or writing assignments
Performance, creative activities Actual or estimated time a student would spend or be expected to spend outside of class hours engaged in preparing for required performance or creative activity

Approved By: University Senate        Date: 

Motion Number:

Revision History: From “UOCC Procedures for Curricular Changes” - Revised August 2009; updated March 6, 2015 (see page 19); updated August 2017; Minor corrections Jan 2018 for consistency; updated for US18/19-09 Feb 2019.

Original Source: UOCC Procedures for Curricular Changes - https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/c/13569/files/2019/02/Procedures-for-Curricular-Changes-Winter-2019-revised-1sc8dfx.pdf