Science Communication, Group R

Time Management: Timetable and Notional Hours

Activity 11

Time Management for students

Some Background Information for this Assignment
All courses presented at the university have a code consisting of three letters and three numbers, e.g. PHY 114 - First course in Physics.
The first number indicates the year the course is presented and the second number often, but not always, indicates if it is a first or second semester course. Not all courses are year courses, many courses are presented in one semester only. Sometimes you can deduce that from the course code; if not it will be shown in the timetable book.

Semester:
Your study time at the university is divided into 2 semesters; each semester consists of 14 weeks - this excludes exam time and any summer of winter schools. Should a course run over 1 quarter it will run over 7 weeks.

Notional hours:
Notional hours is a term used to indicate the number of hours a student will have to spend, on average, to master a specified skill or learning outcome. It is assumed that an average student will need ten notional hours for 1 course credit.

Self-study hours:
To calculate your minimum self-study hours, we’ll use the following for this assignment. The minimum credits for your study programme are 140 credits; this equals 1400 notional hours over 28 weeks (2 semesters) = 50 hours per week. You can of course calculate the notional hours and self-study hours for each subject to get a better idea of how much self-study time you should put in for each course.

Let's Start

• Open a new Excel 'Blank workbook', name this document yourSurnameTime.xlsx and save it in your folder on the network drive. Your folder should be named YourSurname.
• Rename the first worksheet, Courses
  
  

Credits and Notional hours

• In the Courses worksheet, name columns A - E: Course code, Course name, Credits, Notional hours, Semester
• Select an Undergraduate Degree Programme in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences. (If you intend to study in another faculty, do this exercise with any course in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences that is related to what you intend to study.
  Medicine - Choose BSc Biological Sciences
  Engineering - Choose BSc Physics or Chemistry
  BCom - Choose Agricultural Economics.)
  Link: http://www.up.ac.za/yearbooks/programmes/careers/UD/Undergraduate%20Degree
• Go to Year 1 of your programme and make a note of the minimum number of credits you will have to take. The courses for all first year programmes consist of Fundamental modules, Core modules and Elective modules.
  Credits for the Fundamental modules, AIM 111, AIM 121, LST 110 and AIM 102 add up to 10 credits.
  Remark: On the webpage ist states that you need a minimum of 12 credits for the Fundamental modules, but they only add up to 10. Don't stress about this, just do the assignment.
• In the 'Courses' worksheet set the properties of your cells: columns A, B and E should be text, columns C and D 'number' with 0 decimals.
• Complete the worksheet with the information for your programme from the website; i.e. list all the courses, Fundamental, Core and Elective modules and their credits.
• Add the credits for your courses at the bottom of the credit column using the SUM formula. [=SUM(C2:C16)]
  Make sure you have selected enough modules to get to the total number of credits you will need; for most courses you need at least 140 credits.
• Calculate the notional hours for each course using a formula; example in cell D8: =C8*10
• Indicate if the course is presented in semester 1 or 2 in the semester column.
   

Setting up your Timetable

Make sure your cells have the right format (right-click, select "Format Cells ..." and choose General or Number of Text, or... ... ...)

Examples of formulas you should know:

• To add the numbers in cells A1 to A10 you can either type
  • =A1+A2+A3+A4+A5+A6+A7+A8+A9+A10
    or
  • =SUM(A1:A10)
• =COUNTBLANK(L3:L15)
  count how many cells in the column L from cell L3 to L15 are blank
• =COUNTA(B3:B10)
  counts how many cells in the column B from cell B3 to B10 are not blank
• =AVERAGE(G3:G13)
  calculates the average value of the numbers in cells G3 to G13; blank cells are not taken into account. A zero does not count as a blank cell.
• =COUNTIF(C1:C20,"1")
  counts the number of cells that have the value 1
• =COUNTIF(K2:K21,"BioChem")
  counts the number of cells that have the word BioChem.

References & Resources

• Lee Bob Black. 2014. The Career Value of Microsoft Excel [Infographic].
  http://cdn.skilledup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Value-Of-Learning-Excel-Infographic-secondary2.png
  Viewed online on 10 March 2016 at : www.skilledup.com/articles/career-value-microsoft-excel-infographic
• Don Lee 2013. Why you need to learn MS Excel. Viewed online on 10 March 2016 at: http://edonn.com/2013/01/13/why-you-need-to-learn-ms-excel-now/
• Five Minute Lessons. 2014. 10 essential things you should learn about Microsoft Excel. Viewed online on 10 March 2016 at:
  fiveminutelessons.com/learn-microsoft-excel/10-essential-things-you-should-learn-about-microsoft-excel#sthash.UoausCmL.dpbs