OSEA Course Credit Hours and Contact Hours. Contact Hours Credit Hours Equivalency Chart. Quetzil Castaneda is the founding director of OSEA the Open School of Ethnography and Anthropology. Specialist in Maya language, archaeological tourism and heritage, ethnographic methods, experimental ethnography and experimental fieldwork.
* Classroom Standard Hours are based on a 15 week semester course valued
at 3 credits that meets 3 times a week for 50 minutes each period (150
minutes) or two times a week for 1 hour & 20 minutes each period
(140 minutes).
§ Actual Contact Hours range from 140 to 150 minutes (2.34 to 2.5
hours) for every 3 hours of weekly classroom time, based on a 3 credit
course meeting for 15 weeks.
_ OSEA Classroom Hours are actual hours of contact; there is a ratio
of 1.25 Classroom Standard Hours to every 1 OSEA Classroom Hour.
_ OSEA Experiential Learning Hours are calculated at the rate of 1.5
experiential learning to classroom hours. Experiential Learning includes
hours spent in the field doing practicum, on-site learning, field trips,
and other related activities based in interactive learning outside of
classroom; these hours are based in the interactive exchange of information
between students and professor or other qualified knowledge specialist
or expert practitioner who may or may not be an academic.
_ OSEA Fieldwork Research Hours are based on an equivalence of 2 Fieldwork
Research Hour to 1 Classroom Standard Hour. OSEA has established a standard
expectation of six hours of fieldwork a day during periods of independent
research. These hours include both direct contact and non-contact time;
this does not include time necessarily given to general cultural adaptation
and immersion. Every hour of actual contact time during ethnographic
fieldwork entails a variable amount of non-contact fieldwork which consists
of writing and indexing of fieldnotes; transcribing interviews and verbal
data; organizing, cross-indexing, analysis, and tabulation of collected
data. Experts in the field estimate that ethnographers spend 3 to 12
hours of such non-contact fieldwork per one hour of contact fieldwork
in these ancillary activities; the amount varies according to factors
such as research context as well as the media and technologies of data
collection and documentation. OSEA establishes a standard 3 hours of
non-contact for every 1 hour of contact fieldwork.
