Index

At SIUE, every class is assigned a measurement to determine how much work is involved in the class. These units are called credit hours.

Determining the amount of credit hours for a course is normally based on the amount of actual time that is spent working inside and outside of the class. For most typical classes, one “unit” or “hour” expects that students will spend one hour of time in a physical classroom (also known as seat time), plus two hours of work outside of the class on homework.

Let's look at an example.

A typical lecture class, like the one above, meets three times per week. You are in the physical classroom about three hours (50 minutes each day); the total amount of time in class per week is 150 minutes (or 2.5 hours). (It's also assumed that you'll spend 2 hours a day on homework, or 6 hours a week).

A class like this is worth THREE CREDIT HOURS.

For a short-cut, simply round up 50 minutes to one full hour and then add the total amount of time in class per week. This will usually give you the amount of credit hours the course is worth.