Contact Hours - MA

[JumpingJetFlash]

Hi,

I'm sure it varies from course to course but was wondering if anyone could help.

If you did a Masters full time - how many hours a week contact ie lectures/seminars etc did you have? Were these hours clustered over a couple of days or a little every day? I'm considering doing one a fair distance from
home on a direct train line and wondered whether this was complete pie-in-the-sky thinking?

Thanks

You really need to look at the specific Masters at specific universities, as they vary enormously, even sometimes in the same dept.

Models I have taught on include:

Block teaching - students come in for a week for each module
Set days - students have all classes schedules on one day a week
Random - anytime in the teaching week

It often depts whether or not the students following the Masters are predominately full-time or part-time and whether or not the employer or student is most likely to pay.

In general, in my experience, Masters which attract high numbers of P/T students and the employer often pays are more likely to have block or set day teaching. Masters which have a majority of F/T students, either self-funded or on 1+3 RC funding, are random.

You can contact the Uni directly and ask for a copy of the timetable for this year. No guarantee it will be the same of course.

Or contact current students doing the course and ask them.

The Msc I am applying for is 2 days per week. 6 hours of contact 3 on a Mon and 3 on a Thurs. They say this has been the model for years so unlikely to change.

Other courses in the same thing at other places aren't as well organised though I have found.

Thank you both for replying.

I'm off to a couple of open days in the next month or so with an aim to apply for Sept 2015 so will get a chance to ask properly then. Was just musing whether it was a possibility to do a taught PG or whether I'd have to go for a distance learning option so thought I'd ask

If they could be as organised as yours TinyDiamond - that would be awesome

I'm doing a full-time MSc in one of the social sciences. It was 15 hrs/wk (including some time every day) the first term and 9hrs/wk (across 3 days) the second. There are only a small number of p/t students and they are v annoyed by the timetable and the short notice with which it's distributed, but that's not the target demographic I guess.
As with a pp, it seems the module timetables have changed very little from year to year, partly because a number of academic staff commute considerable distances and so have all their commitments clustered to a day or two.

I have two Masters's experiences, for my MBA it was pretty full on, basically a 9 to 4 day made up of lectures, classes, group exercises, seminars etc. altogether there must have been around 7 or 8 modules studied each term. On a Humanities MA I had two hours a week for each of three modules, in theory a lecture then seminar, but actually one session that was a sort of hybrid. They were timetabled on separate days, and only for two terms, third term was just the exam and a revision session for each. For the more popular modules there would be 30 of us, so it would be difficult to get a good discussion going unless the lecturer was fairly structured and strict about it. I have subsequently sat in on undergraduate sessions, fewer students, better discussion

Thank you Likely and Shooting.

Went to open afternoon and looks like Semester 1 is 2 full consecutive days, Semester 2 can be 3 days depending on options and Semester 3 is dissertation so as and when meeting tutor etc. There's obviously work outside that but not necessarily have to be done at Uni.

Certainly gives me food for thought as train is direct in just over an hour