Saylor101: Saylor Course Development

In the past, we put a time estimate in every resource box -- how much time the average student might be expected to spend on that particular resource. Resource time estimates were aggregated to form subunit time advisories. Subunit time estimates were aggregated to form unit-level time advisories. The unit-level time advisories were summed to produce the course length calculation.

That method was flawed in two principle ways:

1. The resource box time advisories were usually just a bit off. This is a result of a design decision that every resource time advisory needed to be rounded to the closest quarter-hour. Even if they're only somewhat inaccurate individually, when all that rounding is aggregated, it considerably throws off the true length the course in hours.
2. It assumes that students' pace through the course is regular and steady and that they interact with every resource that we've provided. That's just not the case.

Just like we are simplifying how our students see Terms of Use and license information, Saylor needs that time advisory information on the back end, but it may do more harm than good to bother the student with that information so frequently.