This document provides strategies for professors to better manage their time spent on teaching responsibilities. It recommends tracking how time is actually spent to identify inefficiencies. Professors should reflect on their learning goals and simplify materials to focus on essential concepts. Preparing early and informally in brief, regular sessions allows for reflection and prevents last-minute rushing. Engaging students through peer learning and limiting availability for non-essential tasks preserves time for core responsibilities.

1. MANAGING
TIME FOR
TEACHING
Dr. Julie Sievers, Director
The Center for Teaching Excellence

2. Works Cited
Robertson, Douglas
Reimondo. Making Time,
Making Change: Avoiding
Overload in College
Teaching. Stillwater, OK: New
Forums Press, 2003.
Boice, Robert. Advice for New
Faculty Members. Needham
Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon,
2000.

3. First Things: Know Thyself
How are you actually spending your
time?
Perception ≠ reality
. . . go research yourself

4. Track Your Time
Tools:
 reverse day planner
 log or diary
 time map
spreadsheet
 collect 2 wks data
 See Joli Jensen, “Who
Knows Where the
Writing Time Goes?”

5. Observe Your Habits
• How do you deal with
distractions:
phone calls, student emails, internet
browsing, social media, meetings, hallway
chit-chat?
• When do you start and stop
working?
• Where do you work with
greatest focus?
• What time of day do you work
best?

6. Do My Choices Match My
Goals & Values?
Every moment, you are making choices about your time.
Do you make them intentionally?
or
Do you simply respond to whatever comes at you first or hardest?

7. At its most fundamental level, managing time
intentionally is about consciously choosing
between two (or many more) good things. It is
about making difficult choices and committing
ourselves to those choices. Most profoundly,
using time intentionally is about values conflict,
discernment, and commitment.
Time is a resource: we must learn to invest our time
in what we value—and to say “no”– in
correspondence with our deepest priorities.
- Douglas Robertson

8. Reconcile Values with Realities
 Identify the Major Areas of Your Life
 Include areas you value but neglect
 Assign times for each area
There are 168 hours in a week.
Work: _____ hrs / wk
Family: _____ hrs / wk
Health / Exercise: _____ hrs / wk
Community: _____ hrs/ wk
Sleep: _____ hrs / wk

9.  Identify the Major Areas of Your Faculty Work
 Assign a Weight to Each Area
 Do the Math (for weeks, months, semesters, or
years)
For example: Work: 45 hrs/week*
Teaching and advising: 70% = 31.5
hrs/wk
Service: 15% = 6.75 hrs/wk
Professional development: 15% = 6.75
hrs/wk

10. Keep doing the math
Teaching: 31.5 hrs/week
-3 office hrs
-12 in-class hours (4 x 3 hrs each)
= 16.5 hrs for course prep & grading
/ 4 courses
= 4.13 prep & grading hrs / course / wk

11. Translate Values to Your
Calendar
Use a “Sunday Meeting” to block out your week.
 Kerry Ann Rockquemore, The Sunday Meeting
1. Block commitments on weekly calendar
(hard commitments + values)
2. Create Your To-Do List
3. Map Your Tasks Onto Your Time
4. Realize that You have More Tasks than
Time
5. Make Hard (but Conscious) Decisions

12. Think:
Do you make conscious decisions about your time?
• If so: what’s your process?
• If not: what prevents you?
• What are the tasks / events that most often
derail your time plan?
Write: your answers down
Think / Write

13. . . . with time to spare
Preparing to Teach

14. Why Less is More
 Good teaching ≠ covering maximal content
 If your main goal is to be comprehensive, you
may:
 Generate more material than you can actually
cover
 Present material at a pace too fast for student
participation or deep engagement

15. Some numbers, from Boice’s
research:
Faculty who focus on
comprehensive
content coverage
spend
 10-15+ hrs / week per
class (includes prep,
teaching, ofc hrs)
 Or 40-60+ hrs / week
for a 4-course load
 3:1 - 4:1 ratio of prep
time to classroom
In spite of hard work,
they often encounter:
 Unengaged students
 Poor student
comprehension
 Mediocre student
ratings
 Personal distress

16. Traits of time-effective faculty
According to Boice’s
studies, successful faculty
achieve:
 2:1 ratio of prep time to
class time
 High levels of student
involvement in class
(taking notes, asking
questions, engaging in
discussions)
 Brief, tentative lecture
notes
 Moderately paced
lecturing that allows
students to take notes
and comprehend points
 Work without rushing
and busyness

17. More time  better
teaching
In fact . . .
Too much prep can diminish the quality
of your teaching.
Note to self:
Conscientious teaching
does not require
constant exhaustion.

18. Strategy 1: Prepare Reflectively
“A growing reflectiveness, especially in terms of
audience awareness, helps simplify teaching
materials to their most memorable and
connectable essentials.
As teachers grow more calm and contemplative,
they more often organize lectures and
discussions into a few central points they hope
to make for the day.
They replace the additional points they were
tempted to make with more examples and
applications of the central points.” (Boice, 23)

19. Essential or Not?
Reflect
 Draft clear goals for
students’ learning
(for each class)
 Reflect on your
learning goals
 Consider how they
apply to the lesson /
course
Simplify (and
Reduce)
 Consider ways to
“cut to the chase”

20. Solve the “right problem”
“Research distinguishes
expert problem solvers as people who
take time to pause and to consider
alternatives,
who make sure they are
solving the right problem
or answering the right question.”

21. Your New Motto: “Perfect is Not
Beautiful”
Robertson:
“Perfectionism is grossly
inefficient.”
Boice:
“Moderate Over-attachment to
Content and Over-reactions to
Criticism”
Suggestion: Practice early
& mid-course evaluations /
feedback from students
Suggestion: Encourage
early (& regular) feedback
from colleagues –
classroom visits, feedback
on course materials
Why?
 Solve the right problem
 Borrow others’ brains
 Understand course as
work-in-progress
 Ameliorate

22. Bonuses:
 “A slower, more
deliberate style of
preparing and presenting
 Simpler teaching notes,
organized around
essential points and
directions,
 Reflective teaching can
leaves teaching
materials less rigidly
structured and more
creative, exciting.”
lead faculty to spend
less time looking at
notes, more time
eliciting student
involvement and
comprehension.
lead faculty to say
things more directly ,

23. Strategy 2: Prep early and
informally
 Use pauses in other
activities to think about
teaching ideas
 Do prewriting or
preplanning activities, like
creating rough drafts of
conceptual outlines, then
successively revising these
 Talk through their ideas
with others
 Set early deadlines for
completing preparations
 Begin collecting and
connecting materials long
before formal planning
begins: put notes into files,
rearrange ideas and
categories in files, look for
illustrative cases, tentatively
arrange materials for
classroom presentation

24. Outcomes of early, informal
starts
 “[efficient] participants translated their
prewritten and pre-diagrammed notes into
class notes well before the [inefficient]
nonparticipants began preparing their classes
of similar dates.
 [These] participants [spent] less total time [ . .
.] getting ready for class, usually a savings of
at least half the time spent preparing by
matched nonparticipants.” (25)

25. Strategy 3: Prep in brief, regular
sessions
 Prep in brief, regular sessions
 “Initiating early work in sessions so
brief they necessitate no major
scheduling (ie, during interstices of
existing schedules). Only later,
when early preparations are
habitual, are they more formally
scheduled.”
 Starting “early, before feeling in the
mood . . . .
 Use freewriting;
 build on notes or conceptual outlines

26. Brief, regular sessions . . .
 “. . . keep efforts
unpressured, reflective,
constant, and timely.
 “ . . . keep teaching prep
limited to durations that do
not interfere with other
important activities during
the rest of the day, such
as exercising, social life,
and scholarly writing.”
flickr photo by pasukaru76 https://flickr.com/photos/pasukaru76/3535379567 shared under a Creative Commons (CC0) license
• “Why 15 minutes?”
• “An everyday essential: the
timer”
- Natalie Houston, Profhacker

27. Long, uninterrupted work
sessions?
Are hard to find!
Can cause
1. Rollercoaster energy:
“working under pressure
and excitement until
hypomania and [. . .
]sadness and disinterest
set in”
2. Inefficiencies: “preparing
materials beyond the point
of diminishing returns”
3. Stops & starts: an
“inconstancy of working”
(Boice 40).
How to fit in brief, regular
prep?
 Allot daily time.
 Schedule the sessions if
necessary.
 Try 15 minutes
 Use a timer

28. 1. Think:
• How do you control time spent prepping for class?
Name one strategy that has worked for you.
• What is a challenge you face?
2. Pair with someone at your table
3. Share your success and your challenge.
Think / Pair / Share

29. . . . while still being learner-centered
Managing Student
Interactions

30. Don’t Hoard Responsibility
Use non-teacher feedback
 Peer discussions & peer teaching
 E-textbook interactive features & online quizzing
Make students responsible for
 obtaining course materials
 monitoring their completion of course
assignments
 preparing their own study guides

31. A Time and Place for Everything
Create a place for each
activity
 Where do you work best?
Be able to block access to
you
 Leave the office?
 Work at home
 Close the door
 Know your campus options
 Know your community options

32. Stick to Your Knitting: Refer to
Others
You do not have to be a:
 Counselor
 Case worker
 Writing consultant
 Computer support desk
 Librarian
 Disability expert
flickr photo by Willy D https://flickr.com/photos/billybrown00/4982722491 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
Get familiar with
• Student Academic Support Services -
http://think.stedwards.edu/acadservices
• The Health and Counseling Center -

33. Short with Many, Long with Few
 Use asynchronous
communication (email,
voice mail) to control
your interactions with
others.
 Don’t always be
available by the door,
phone, email : limit
immediate access to
you
 Teach your students
your communication
system
 Create a time and
place to process
asynchronous
communication
 Limit emailing, etc to
the time available

34. 1. Think:
• How do you control the time you spend interacting
with students?
• What is a challenge you face?
2. Pair up with a different neighbor.
3. Share your success and your challenge.
Think / Pair / Share

35. Grading Efficiency: Tips and Strategies
Managing Time for Research and Scholarship
Other Aspects of Managing an Academic Career
On the CTE web site:
http://think.stedwards.edu/cte/blog/post/managing-time-
teaching
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