Do managers in other university libraries keep statistics
of time taken by staff in preparing information
skills sessions? If so, could you please give details.

We would like to begin doing this as it is clear that the
time spent on preparation is far greater than the actual
delivery time which we have been recording for some time.
We did consider using a "ballpark" figure for each session,
for example we might say the average time spent on a
session was 3,4,5, (pick a number) times the length of the
session. Indeed 3 colleagues said they had seen figures in
the literature or on courses which suggested a figure, but
they were all different and in short nobody favoured this
method anyway.

This left us with asking the staff involved to record their
preparation time in future. For good reasons (see the
three quotes from colleagues below) this was not favoured
either.

"I'd find it very difficult to keep track of time spent in
preparation - multiply that by two because there are often
two people doing bits of sessions and the figures are
likely to be even more unreliable."

"I think the aim here is great but that in reality the
figures will be no more than unreliable guesses. I know
last Autumn semester preparation was done in so many short
slots - 10 mins here, 15 mins there - that counting up
would have been impractical. I frankly would have been
making the figures up".

"I think it will be very hard to get an accurate or useful
picture of the time we spend on IS preparation. I suspect
most of us fit it in at odd moments, of varying length,
which will be difficult to accurately total. It always seem
to be at busy times though, with lots of other demands, to
add the problem of remembering to make a note of it at the
time. I provide quite a range of different types of
sessions, at differing skills levels, requiring varying
amounts of preparation, so it would be very difficult for
me to come up with even a generalised figure."


Any suggestions?