Abnormal Psychology Credit Hours

May 20, 2018 5:43 PM

Following on to my question about Abnormal Psychology classes ... Is there a difference between a 3 credit hour class and a 4 credit hour class? For example ...

At Lake Tahoe Community College I see a 4 hour class:

PSY-202-01
Abnormal Psychology (Summer 2018 PSY-202-01)
Summer 2018 N. Melucci 7/9/2018 12:00:00 AM - 8/17/2018 12:00:00 AM Online 4

and at College of the Canyons I see a 3 hour class:

PSYCH-240-35713 Abnormal Psychology Online Campus
**Short Term Class** 06/04/18-07/07/18
M. Andrade 1 / 35 / 0 3.00

Is the 4 hour class more work than the 3 hour class?
Or is a different metric involved?

posted by falsedmitri to Education (8 answers total)

Ooof. This is complicated.

Historically, most colleges have based the number of credit hours on the number of hours that a student spends in the classroom per week. So a four credit hour class would be one with four hours a week of instructional time, and a three credit hour class would be three hours of instructional time. Typically, there would be more work outside of class for a 4-credit-hour class than for a 3-credit-hour class. But online classes kind of mess up that system, since there often isn't any time spent in class per se. So in that case, a 3-credit-hour class would contain the amount of coursework that would be in a class that had three hours in a classroom at that institution. To complicate things further, different institutions may have different expectations for how much work that would be.

Can you get your hands on syllabi and see if they cover the same basic material?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:59 PM on May 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Oh, and if you just need to fulfill a requirement that you have an abnormal psychology class, then it probably doesn't matter if it's three or four credit hours. It's fine to contact whatever program you're using it for and ask them if either or both classes would be sufficient, but my sense is that most abnormal psych classes are three credit hours, so I don't think that should be an issue. Sometimes science classes are three hours if they don't have a lab and four hours if they do, and that can be an issue if you're using it as a pre-requisite for a program that requires you to take the class with a lab. I don't think that should be an issue for this class.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:09 PM on May 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: @ArbitraryAndCapricious:
I don't need the hours, just the class to fulfill a requirement, as you suggest. So, as you surely know, if I can get fulfill the requirement for less work, I'll do the 3 hours, but I'm not convinced they are that different. Here are the course descriptions. Do they say anything to you?

Lake Tahoe Community College

PSY 202 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
Lecture 4, Lab 0, Units 4 Grade or P/NP option
This course is an introduction to the scientific study of mental illness and mental disorder. The course will cover such topics as diagnosis, causes, treatments, biological and cultural influences, and social consequences of various mental illnesses.
Transfers to CSU, UC
ADVISORY: ENG 101 and PSY 101 or equivalent.

College of the Canyons

PSYCH 240 ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY
Units: 3.00
UC:CSU 54.00 hours lecture
C-ID PSY 120
Recommended preparation: PSYCH-101 or PSYCH101H

Examines the history, patterns, and causes of maladaptive behavior as reviewed in the field of
abnormal psychology, including clinical assessments using the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, therapies, and prevention strategies.
posted by falsedmitri at 6:13 PM on May 20, 2018

It looks like all of LTCC's courses are four or five credit hours instead of three or four--I somehow don't think people are doing a lot of lab time in English Literature I--so this is a quirk of the campus.
posted by thomas j wise at 6:18 PM on May 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm on mobile and can't think of what it's called, but there's a website where you can look up what community college class is equivalent to what course at each UC (I think CSUs are a separate website). If they're accepted for the same requirements, they're very likely functionally equivalent.

My experience was that different departments in the same university sometimes assign units to courses differently, so unless the transfer agreements with the UC system say otherwise, I'd just assume this was normal variation between schools.
posted by hoyland at 6:49 PM on May 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

In my school, credit were related to hours of instruction with teachers expected to assign homework proportional to the hours. So 3 units meant three hours per week for ten weeks or 30 hours on instruction and 4 units would be 40 hours. If that translated to your school, the 3 unit class would be slightly shorter and slightly less intense (30 hrs/6 wks = 5 instruction hours/week, 40 hrs/7wks = 5.7 instruction hrs per week)

The focus of the class sounds slightly different in that the longer class looks at cultural and social factors related to the illnesses while the three unit class seems to take a more clinical and individualistic perspective.
posted by metahawk at 11:42 PM on May 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

The website I was thinking of is ASSIST. It turns out that College of the Canyons is on semesters and Lake Tahoe Community College is on quarters. This means the number of units is not readily comparable.

They both transfer as general education requirements to both the UC and CSU systems. FWIW, CSU Fresno accepts the College of the Canyons course as equivalent to their abnormal psychology, but not the Lake Tahoe CC course. I don't know that I would read too much into that unless you happen to be studying at CSU Fresno. (CSU Channel Islands accepts neither, but that may just mean they don't offer a lower division abnormal psychology course.)
posted by hoyland at 4:17 AM on May 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

The college-to-college variation, and the difference in professors, would be bigger than the difference of 3 vs. 4 credits. Are the professors listed? You could check rottenprofessors to see what former students have said about the workload. But in your shoes... I’d take whichever is cheapest!

Also, I think they are meant to be the same. A standard non-lab class at a quarter system college is usually 4 instead of 3 credits. And the “conversion” is to multiply the quarter units by 2/3.
posted by sometamegazelle at 5:35 AM on May 21, 2018 [1 favorite]