5 Ways to Reduce Your Workload as a Teacher
Being a teacher is a fulfilling job, but it can also be intense and stressful. You do a lot more than just teaching. Like planning lessons, preparing exams, and grading, for example. Finding ways to do your work more efficiently, can help you reduce your workload and give you more time to focus on teaching. You probably already have some effective methods but a few new ideas can’t hurt, right? Take a look at these 5 practical tips on how to reduce your workload.
Understanding Teacher Workload
A heavy workload can significantly impact teacher well-being . This leads to burnout, decreased job satisfaction, and even health issues. This can impact not only the educators themselves, but also their students and institutions. Stressed teachers are not in the best shape to deliver quality education after all. Teachers often feel overwhelmed and don’t seem to have enough time in their workday according to OECD, 2020 . Therefore, finding ways to improve teacher workload to reduce stress also directly impacts the quality of education.
Being a teacher involves many duties other than actual teaching: lecture planning, test creation, grading, classroom management and administrative tasks to name a few. Research shows that university professors spend around 18 hours per week on activities other than teaching . That means that these tasks can take up to half of your working hours per week. Understanding how they impact your workday is the first step in finding ways to manage them better.
There are a couple of ways you can start saving time as a teacher. We have grouped them into 5 categories below:
Time Management?
Effective time management starts with prioritizing tasks. As a teacher, you can list your daily tasks and categorize them based on urgency and importance. One popular time management method that can be used is the Eisenhower matrix . In the Eisenhower matrix, you rank your tasks according to importance and urgency. If a task is both urgent and important, it should be picked up first. It sounds simple but often people resort to doing the task that is top of mind: the email that came in most recently or the thing your colleague asked you to do just now.
Focusing on high-priority tasks first ensures that essential responsibilities are completed on time. Once you have an overview of your tasks, you can create a daily schedule. This builds a routine and makes you able to group similar tasks. Creating a structured daily schedule helps allocate specific times for various activities, reducing the chance of tasks piling up.?
Keep in mind that unexpected events may happen. That is why you should treat your schedule more as a guideline for your daily activities than a rigid timeline. Using tools like to-do lists or digital calendars can also help in maintaining an organized schedule.
Use of Technology
Technology can be a great ally for teachers. Educational apps and tools can help you streamline various tasks, such as attendance tracking, assignment submissions, and communication with students.?
Some of these tools include Learning Management Systems (LMS), which support teachers in most activities and integrate with other software specialized in a certain area (for example plagiarism detection, exam management, or virtual classrooms).
Assessment software can also reduce your workload. It can significantly reduce the time spent on creating and grading exams. This is one of the most demanding tasks for teachers at all levels, especially in higher education.?Most tools can handle multiple-choice tests and online quizzes, but some platforms support more advanced question types and tests as well. Such as mathematical equation questions, coding questions and peer-reviewed assignments. Exam management software can be an efficient tool to reduce your workload while increasing the quality of your student’s assessments.?
We also can’t ignore emerging technologies like AI. The use of AI-powered tools is still a controversial topic in education. It has a big impact on our sector and has a lot of schools raising concerns (Oxford University Press, 2023 ). In the coming years, we can expect a rapid increase in generative AI tools in education . For example, scheduling tasks, creating assignments or even setting up whole courses. You should keep in mind that generative AI is not a magic box that suddenly takes over all of your work. Instead, you should see AI as an extra team member who can help you perform time-consuming tasks in less time. Much like a teaching assistant, it helps you save a great deal of work, but only if you check on them every now and then and adjust the outcomes where necessary.?
Delegating tasks
Another way to reduce your workload is by delegating tasks to students, teaching assistants or even AI as briefly mentioned in the previous chapter.?
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Delegating is a key principle in many professions. Organizations of different types and sizes can benefit from it. However, not every task can be delegated and the lack of direct control can be intimidating at the beginning. If done properly, however, it can help you reduce your workload significantly.
Tasks such as organizing study materials or group activities can be assigned to your students. Teaching assistants can provide support for assignment preparation, class organization, and lectures for example.?
In addition, technology has made it easier to assign tasks and to communicate with your assistants on the go. This can be done through systems like Teams, your LMS or even directly in your assessment software.
But how do you effectively delegate responsibilities? Delegating tasks effectively is not as easy as it seems. However, it can help to use the 4 C's of Delegation: Clarity, Capability, Communication, and Control. These four sum up the key components of successful task delegation:
The more effort you put into giving clear instructions and giving the right feedback, tailored to the recipient, the better the result. Or as they say in data analytics: shit in equals shit out. Take time to be very clear about the scope of the task and know what the person or tool is capable of to get the results you want.
Using templates
Using standardized lesson plan templates can save time and ensure that all necessary components are included. These templates can be customized to fit your teaching style and subject.?
Lesson templates can be especially beneficial over time, as topics are often repeated over multiple years. In any case, the best practice is to design templates based on core topics and learning objectives. However, it should also allow for flexibility and easy adjustment.
The same strategy can be applied to assignments and exams. By saving and reusing questions, for example. By building up a digital question bank over time and sharing these you can reuse a lot of content over the years. These questions can also be shared and improved with other colleagues. A question that was used in an exam the year before can be used as a practice question in the following year, for example.
Having a clear overview of what question was used when without having to dig through countless old files is key. Ideally, you also incorporate the use of randomised variables when creating new questions. This makes your questions unique for each student, class or year. It takes some extra time in the beginning to set up, but if done well can save a lot of time in the long run.
Collaborate with colleagues
Teaching can sometimes be viewed as an individual job. However, collaboration with other educators has multiple benefits (Vangrieken et al., 2015 ). You can share resources, ideas, and responsibilities. Regular meetings and discussions can create a sense of community and reduce individual workload. It is also beneficial to get input from teachers with different levels of experience, who can give you new ideas or tips on your way of working.
Some examples of how you can benefit from collaboration:
By using the digital tools at your disposal, collaboration has never been easier. You can now work on assignments with your colleagues in the cloud or share best practices with like-minded people in online communities. You are not alone, and the challenges you face are often not unique. All you have to do is ask for help.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are several ways for teachers to reduce their workload. These strategies involve time management, usage of technology, delegating tasks, use of templates and collaborating with colleagues. While you might not use all of these techniques, implementing some can already help reduce your administrative workload. That way you can reduce stress and get back to teaching as soon as possible.
At Ans, we provide teachers with a platform specifically designed to be a time-saver for educators. We understand how challenging the grading process can be for teachers. Ans was created by two teaching assistants at the TU Delft who saw an opportunity to reduce their workload. Since then Ans has been specifically designed to help teachers improve their assessment workflow. Ans supports instructors during the whole assessment process: from creating and sharing questions and assignments to grading and analyzing results. The goal is to help you save time while improving the overall quality of your assessments and feedback.
If you want to know how Ans benefits teachers and professors, read more here .