PREOPTEREĆENOST UČENIKA ŠKOLSKIM OBAVEZAMA / STUDENTS OVERLOAD WITH SCHOOL DUTIES

School in the modern society should provide an environment for students to feel safe and motivated for learning. There should be an optimal student workload with the schoolwork as well as with the homework. Unfortunately, student overload at all levels of education has been evident. Their overloaded schedule presents a significant challenge and may cause fatigue, exhaustion, distraction, mope, high levels of stress, apathy, superficially and campaign learning, and general lack of motivation. Due to the topicality of the issue, the authors of this paper have tried to offer a review of the sources of the student overload. Different sources, as well as negative consequences of student overload have been determined based on a significant number of empirical works so far. The article also suggests measures to relieve students. Psychologists, in cooperation with the students’ parents and experts from other branches of the education sector, can contribute in finding a way to prevent and reduce consequences of the overload. Empirical studies about sources of student overload are also necessary to determine evidence based guidelines for the education reform.

Correlation between students’ workload and attendance as related towards final grades: A case of study on Statistics for first-year Engineering students.

In this work, a monitoring experience of student workload and attendance is presented. During four academic years, from 2015 until 2019, first-year students of an Engineering degree have been asked, three times a week, to estimate their autonomous workload devoted to the Statistics subject. The monitoring strategy has been anonymous, open and voluntary and has shown a high ratio of participation: 407 students out of 433. To generate the final dataset this information has been combined with attending records to classroom-based lectures and final grades achieved. Results indicate that declared student’s workload hardly reaches the 90 hours of autonomous work established in the ECTS ratio of our university. Nonparametric comparisons show strong statistical evidences of the relationship between final grades in the subject and declared workload and attendance. We find that attendance is crucial in order to achieve a homogeneous workload along the semester and a success in the subject’s grading.

A Student Workload Estimator Tool: Rethinking Modular Credit

This paper aims to develop a Student Workload Estimator tool for University students. Traditionally, modular credit has been used as a student workload indicator at a purely time-based stage. This needs rethinking keeping in view the changing educational settings. The paper presents a basic student workload model built to assess student workload in a more realistic and detailed manner taking into consideration objective factors as well as subjective factors for personalized model. It presents a mechanism for data collection of course workload as well as of the students’ subjective perceptions for the workload estimator. The outcomes are expected to provide more insights than only estimated weekly working hours indicated by modular credit, thus allowing students to make more informed decisions for a suitable academic path and to help reduce the course dropping rate. Deliverables of the work include a data collection tool and a workload estimator tool.