This article was published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Vol 27 number 3,
Author(s): José-Reyes Ruiz-Gallardo, Santiago Castaño, Juan J. Gómez-Alday and Arturo Valdés, "Assessing Student Workload in Problem Based Learning: Relationships among Teaching Method, Student Workload and Achievement. A Case Study in Natural Sciences", Pages 619-627, Copyright Elsevier (April 2011).
The current study explores student workload after a change in teaching style from lecture to Problem Based Learning and Cooperative Learning. The proposed method approach the time student spend working, identifying over/underloadings.
The study also examines relationship of this method with student outcomes.
Results show that the change clearly overloads students if it is not adequately planned and monitored. However, it was found that PBL and cooperative learning influence positively on student performance: marks, drop-outs and attendance were markedly better with the new instruction method.
The authors conclude that calculating student workload in terms of hours is very important, but especially when implementing a change in teaching style.