Education Analytics – Key Metrics for Instructor Planning

by Parul Singh

Teaching is a complex, multifaceted activity that often requires the instructors to juggle between multiple tasks and goals simultaneously. The following are the small but powerful set of metrics that can interpret workloads and instructor assignments to make a better decision for effective and efficient instructor planning for courses. This would also support budget, resource allocation analyses and decision-making. 

These metrics help the user to learn more about the types of courses which have been taught by the types of instructors, which courses have been taught in recent years, and the specific instructor for a specific duration / course.

Prorated Instructor Enrollment Count:

The Prorated Instructor Enrollment Count is the course enrollment count that are associated with the instructor for that course and that we prorate for team-teaching. The proration of the enrollment count for a course is based on the instructor hours per week for each member of the teaching team.

For example, If there is only one instructor for the course, then the metric will associate with all of the enrollments in that course with the single instructor.

This metric can be viewed at different granular levels for better understanding and making informed decisions:

1. This metric can be examined at the reporting college, department, and the job level of the instructor (i.e. Regular Faculty, OR the other faculty). This view would provide a comprehensive insight into Instructor enrollments counts those are associated with the college, department, and Instructor types etc.

For example: At the college of Chemistry, Department of Chemical and Biomedical engineering, & the Regular Faculty had 250 instructor enrollment counts. This could be anything from the following departments:

• Credit department 
• Pay department of the instructor
• Academic department

2. This metric could be analyzed on a lower granularity level of a course with the instructor and enrollment counts associated with it. For ex. General Chemistry was taught by 3 instructors A, B, C having specific instructor enrollments counts.

3. A quick insight for a particular instructor, like which courses the instructor is teaching and the counts associated with it. For ex. Instructor A is teaching courses B, C, D etc. and the respective instructor enrollment counts.

Prorated Instructor SCH Nbr (Number):

Prorated Instructor SCH Nbr is the number of student’s credit hours for a particular course which is associated with the instructor and that prorate for team-teaching.

Student Credit Hours (SCH) are the sum of each enrolled student’s unit, wherein the individual students can take some classes for differing credit. This SCH Number for a given class is prorated for team-teaching and the proration is based on the instructor hours per week for each member of the teaching team for the course. This also could be analyzed at different granular levels as discussed for the prorated instructor enrollment counts.

Percentage of Instructor Hrs (Hours) Taught:

Percentage of Instructor Hrs Taught shows the percentage of the class instructor hours per week associated with the instructor. For example, if a course section is taught by two instructors then the Percentage of Instructor Hrs Taught will be 50% for each Instructor.

We could also view the metric for an Instructor which displays the percentage of Instructor hours associated for a course. Instructor A teaches courses B and C and his Instructor hours is 100 and 33 percent respectively.

Instructor Headcount:

This metric indicates the count of active teaching and recorded teaching activity. The instructor headcount could be analyzed for a reporting college, department, and the different levels of course. It can also be viewed across years to analyze the trend change in the instructor count for any particular course.

Instructor Hours Per Week:

Instructor hours are nothing but the average number of hours the instructor is teaching per week. This would normally not include instructor preparation time, office hours, etc. Instructor hours for single instructor classes will be defaulted to the total scheduled hours.

For example, If instructor A has taught only Math for scheduled hours 10, then the instructor hours per week is 10.

This metric helps to plan the workload of the particular instructor by getting quick information on the total instructor hours per week by providing the detailed information on the number of hours spent on the courses.

Above generic key metrics help the university to increase the performance of the Instructors, Classes, Rooms, and Offered Courses effectively by assisting the plan accurately and preventing any bottlenecks in the student education process.

Parul Singh is a Senior Manager at KPI Partners and works with the expert team within the KPI Partners Offshore Technology Center. She is a Data Warehouse Specialist whose areas of professional expertise also include Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and the Oracle BI Applications.  Check out Parul’s blog at KPIPartners.com.