Credit and academic time
Credit and Academic Time
Anchor Christian University (ACU) awards academic credit in semester credit hours. One semester credit hour represents a minimum of 45 hours of total student academic work per term. A three-credit course requires a minimum of 135 hours of academic work, regardless of delivery format or term length.
The standard semester is 16 weeks. ACU also offers five eight-week sessions each year: two in the fall, two in the spring, and one in the summer. Courses offered in shorter sessions require the same minimum total academic work per credit hour as courses offered over a full semester.
Online course workload includes engagement with learning resources and completion of learning activities. ACU measures the total academic workload across these components and does not prescribe a ratio between them. ACU uses the workload estimator available at https://cat.wfu.edu/resources/workload2/ to estimate academic work when designing courses to meet credit-hour expectations.
In online and distance education courses, ACU verifies credit-hour requirements through Equivalent Academic Engagement rather than traditional physical classroom seating. Academic work includes a blend of synchronous or asynchronous instructional activities and independent student preparation.
For planning purposes, the minimum 135 hours of academic work in a three-credit, eight-week course averages approximately 16.9 hours per week when distributed evenly across the session. This average is not a fixed weekly workload.
Full-time enrollment is defined as 12 or more semester credit hours per semester.