Credit hours traditionally quantify expected instructional time per week in a course, informing student course selection decisions and contributing to degree requirement satisfaction. In this study, we investigate course load measures beyond this metric, including determinants from course assignment structure and LMS interactions. Collecting 596 course load ratings on time load, mental effort, and psychological stress, we investigate to what extent course design decisions gleaned from LMS data explain students’ perception of course load. We find that credit hours alone explain little variance compared to LMS features, specifically number of assignments and course drop ratios late in the semester. Student-level features (e.g., satisfied prerequisites and course GPA) exhibited stronger associations with course load than the credit hours of a course; however, they added only little explained variance when combined with LMS features. We analyze students’ perceived importance and manageability of course load dimensions and argue in favor of adopting a construct of course load more holistic than credit hours.

传统上，学分量化了一门课程每周的预期教学时间，为学生的课程选择决策提供信息，并有助于满足学位要求。在这项研究中，我们研究了超出该指标的课程负荷测量，包括课程分配结构和 LMS 交互的决定因素。我们收集了 596 个关于时间负荷、脑力劳动和心理压力的课程负荷评级，调查从 LMS 数据收集的课程设计决策在多大程度上解释了学生对课程负荷的看法。我们发现，与 LMS 功能相比，单独的学分可以解释很少的差异，特别是学期末的作业数量和课程下降率。与课程学分相比，学生水平的特征（例如，满足的先决条件和课程 GPA）与课程负荷的关联性更强；然而，当与 LMS 功能结合时，它们只增加了很少的解释方差。我们分析了学生对课程负荷维度的感知重要性和可管理性，并主张采用比学分更全面的课程负荷结构。