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I am currently teaching in a community college that includes teaching introductory programming course in C++. I also have a colleague who is currently teaching networking course with a laboratory hands-on part (I also teach this one before). Both of these courses are good for four (4) credits. Now, my question is how many preps are these courses considered in your school, is it good for one preparation (or one prep) or two preps? In my programming class by the way most of my students if not all have no prior programming experience in high school, so the teaching is more challenging than normal. Also, the networking course the lab could include actual cabling, accessing a router physically (via cable) and configuring routers virtually. I am saying this because from our college the only courses that are considered two preps are chemistry and physics classes.

Edper
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  • The answers would have to be somewhat institution-specific. Where I am, one unique course is one prep. If you teach multiple sections of the same course, then that is still one prep. – Ben I. Feb 02 '21 at 14:33
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    I feel like this question might be too specific to your school and curriculum for others to be able to provide much useful guidance. Have you tried talking to your colleagues and department head? – Ben I. Feb 02 '21 at 14:35
  • Does your contract say that you have some number of "preps" each term? If so, what is the number? Probably not 1 or 2 like Dartmouth and probably less than 7, but I'd expect it to be high for a community college. – Buffy Feb 02 '21 at 16:11
  • You are teaching `C++`, and how to program at the same time. Cognitive load theory say that teaching two complex things together is not effective. Learning to program is hard. Learning C++ is very hard (if experienced programmer, harder if not). – ctrl-alt-delor Feb 03 '21 at 10:17
  • What is a "prep" is in a USA thing? Is it an abbreviation? – ctrl-alt-delor Feb 03 '21 at 10:18
  • @Buffy If we go more than 4 preps we have an overload that would be paid separately than your regular salary. – Edper Feb 04 '21 at 10:49
  • @ctrl-alt-delor Preps is just a contraction for preparations. I think I mentioned it on my question. As for cognitive overload, you might be right there. In fact we are currently proposing to have a pre-programming class before taking C++. We don't go OOP on our C++ intro class of course. We do go up to array as the last topic. – Edper Feb 04 '21 at 10:51
  • @BenI.Thank you for your response. Yeah, I understand that this could be institution specific. But I just want to know how it is done in different institutions so that I might have a reference that I could use. As for talking to the department head, the answer yes I did so. But the decision honestly is not on him/her but on higher ups that has less knowhow that I want him/her to be. – Edper Feb 04 '21 at 11:03
  • Have a look at `golang` a modern `C` like language. Or `lisp` a good teaching language, and much simpler than `C`, and easier to learn and use. – ctrl-alt-delor Feb 04 '21 at 19:49
  • OK. So what is a preparation. – ctrl-alt-delor Feb 04 '21 at 19:52
  • @ctrl-alt-delor Sorry for this late reply. A preparation or preps is like this. Let's say I am teaching chemistry class. On lecture time I focused on the theoretical part of chemistry (so that's one preparation). However, in my laboratory I prepare different instruments & chemicals that students play around with for their activities. And that's another prep separate from the lecture. So, that would mean two preps/preparations. On the other hand i am teaching history with no lab that's one prep. The tricky part is programming wherein you can have both lecture and lab. Is it 2 preps or 1 prep? – Edper Mar 04 '21 at 05:11
  • @edper So these preps are they for the teacher? I am still guessing here. Are they paid preparation time allocated to the teacher? – ctrl-alt-delor Mar 07 '21 at 10:25
  • @ctrl-alt-delor Yes, these are for teachers and yes they are paid. In our case the payment scheme and computations is based on either credits or preps. – Edper Mar 09 '21 at 22:44

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