Some time ago – was it really over a decade? – I wrote a piece about the optimum size of modules in physics teaching. I was still in the United Kingdom then so my ramblings were based on a framework in which undergraduate students would take 120 credits per year, usually divided into two semesters of 60 credits each. In Cardiff, for instance, most modules were (and still are) 10 credits but some core material was delivered in 20 credit modules. In the case of Sussex, to give a contrasting example, the standard “quantum” of teaching was the 15 credit module. I actually preferred the latter because that would allow the lecturer to go into greater depth, students would be only be studying four modules in a semester (instead of six if the curriculum consisted of 10 credit modules), and there would be fewer examinations. In short, the curriculum would be less “bitty”.
In Maynooth the size of modules is reckoned using the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) which takes a full year of undergraduate teaching to be 60 credits rather than 120 in the UK, but the conversion between the two is a simple factor of two. In Maynooth the “standard” unit of teaching is 5 credits, with some 10 credit modules thrown in (usually extending over two semesters, e.g. projects). This is similar to the Cardiff system. The exception concerns first-year modules, which are 7.5 credits each because students take four modules in their first year so they have to be 30/4=7.5 credits each. The first year is therefore like the Sussex system. It changes to a five-credit quantum from Year 2 onwards because students do three subjects at that stage.
I find it interesting to compare this with the arrangements here in Barcelona (and elsewhere in Spain). Here the ECTS credit size is used, but the standard module is six credits, not five, and year-long projects here are 12 credits rather than 10. The effect of this is that students generally study five modules at a time (or four plus a project). To add to the fun there are also some 9 credit modules, so a semester could be made up of combinations of 6-credit and 9-credit chunks as long as the total adds up to 30.
Anyway, the main point of all this is to illustrate the joy of the sexagesimal system which derives from the fact that 60, being a superior composite number, has so many integer divisors: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 15, 20, and 30. The Babylonians knew a thing or two!
In the Dark 