Faculty Handbook

Contact hours

The deans' designee group has asked that OSA monitor credits to ensure the students have sufficient contact hours for the number of credits offered for each course.  The registrar's office has mandated that courses have 14 instructional contact hours for each credit (for instance three credits have 42 contact hours). When considering excursions, field trips count as half credits (therefore, for every two hours of a field trip, including travel time, you can count one hour of instruction). Additionally, for every one hour in class, there is expected to be two hours of study time per day.  Therefore, the University has set a maximum of six contact hours per day (which assumes 12 hours of study time). The standard guide suggests one credit per week on-site.  Program proposals that significantly exceed this amount will be carefully reviewed by the sponsoring college(s) and the Office of Study Abroad.
 
If your program has contact hours before and/or after the on-site dates, specify this in the program Web text.  Mandatory instructional contact hours outside of the program dates must be indicated in the syllabus and it is assumed that lack of attendance will impact the final grade. If this is the case, consider how you will implement these pre-departure and post-return class sessions for non-MSU students who cannot come to East Lansing as well as students who sign up after the sessions have begun.