You can usually tell how heavy a term feels within the first fortnight, but you cannot say how many hours it actually is until somebody asks you to add it up. A course outline says three hours a week, and then you remember the lab is another three and the tutorial is one more.
This adds it up properly. Every course, the hours it takes each week, and how many weeks the semester runs, giving you contact hours for the term and a number you can compare against a part-time job or a coop placement.
One honest detail: 240 hours sounds enormous until you divide it by fifteen weeks and get sixteen hours a week, which is two working days. The total is bigger than the weekly number almost every time, and that gap is the point of looking.
Enter your courses and weekly hours to get total class hours per semester.
How the total is worked out
It is one multiplication per course, then a sum:
Course hours = hours per week × weeks in the semester
Semester total = all the course hours added together
Each course reports its own line, so you can see which one is eating the term. A six-hour chemistry course with a lab is twice the commitment of a three-hour lecture on the same weekly timetable, and that only shows up once the rows are kept apart instead of averaged into “four courses”.
The weeks field is the one worth thinking about. Enter the number of weeks that actually contain classes. A semester that runs sixteen calendar weeks with a reading week and a finals period where no lectures happen is a fifteen-week semester, and entering sixteen inflates every course by about seven per cent.
A worked semester
Four courses, a fifteen-week term, hours as they appear on the outlines:
| Course | Hours per week | Weeks | Semester hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mathematics | 3 | 15 | 45 |
| Biology (with lab) | 4 | 15 | 60 |
| English | 3 | 15 | 45 |
| Chemistry (with lab) | 6 | 15 | 90 |
| Total | 16 | 15 | 240 |
240 hours of contact time, sixteen a week. Now put it next to the credit load: that is twelve credits, and the usual guidance for studying outside class is two to three hours per credit per week, so 24 to 36 hours of reading and assignments on top.
That gives a realistic week of 40 to 52 hours, which is a full-time job with a commute. It is a useful number to have before you pick up a shift, because “four courses is fine” is often a memory of a term where two of them were electives nobody attended.
What contact hours leave out
Plenty, and all of it in the same direction. Commute time between buildings is not in there, nor is the reading, the lab write-ups, the group project meetings, or the evening you spend lost in a library. Contact hours are the floor of your week, not the average.
Exams too. Four three-hour finals is another twelve hours at the end of term that no course outline puts in its weekly figure, and the revision week before them is a full-time commitment of its own.
Courses that do not run the full term are the awkward case. If one of them is an eight-week module, its hours belong to eight weeks while the rest belong to fifteen, and a single weeks field cannot hold both. Run the calculation twice, once for each block, and add the two totals.
Labs and tutorials count as their own rows if they have their own hours, or they can be folded into the course line — but pick one method and stay with it, because mixing the two is how a semester ends up double counted. And if the tool disagrees with a printed timetable, the printed one wins.
Other tools
- commute time and cost — the hours between those hours, in petrol and in minutes
- coop hours tracker — for the term where the contact hours are replaced by paid ones
- credit hours to study hours — the outside-class half of the week, worked out from credits
Frequently asked questions
Should I include labs and tutorials?
Yes, if they are timetabled hours. Either give them their own row or add them to the course total, as long as every course is treated the same way. The commonest error in a first term is counting the lecture for a course and forgetting its lab entirely.
How many weeks should I enter?
Only the weeks with teaching in them. Exclude reading week, holidays and any finals period with no classes. If your calendar says sixteen weeks but two of them are break, enter fourteen and check the total against the printed schedule.
Is twenty hours a week too much?
There is no universal line, but sixteen contact hours with twelve credits of study on top is already a full-time week. If you are working more than fifteen paid hours alongside it, expect something to give, and it is usually the reading rather than the shifts.
Does it count study time?
No, only hours you are physically in class. Study time scales with credits instead, roughly two to three hours per credit per week, which is what the credit hours to study hours tool works out from the same course list.
Can I use this for a part-time term?
Yes. Enter the courses you are actually taking and the same number of weeks. A two-course part-time term comes out around six to eight hours a week, which is the honest comparison against a full load rather than a guess.