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Student 2016/17 - Module FTE

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Student 2016/17

Fields required from institutions in All fields

Module FTE


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Typefield
Short nameFTE
Description

This field indicates the proportion of a full-time equivalent year attributed to the module. It shows the proportion of an instance year's full-time study for this qualification aim that the module would represent.

A year's full-time study for this qualification aim is a programme of study year (instance year), regardless of how this fits with provider's academic sessions or HESA reporting periods.

Students on instance years which overlap HESA reporting years (e.g. many PGT students) should be attached to the same module in both HESA reporting years, with a full Module.FTE in both reporting years. This is not overcounting, as Module.FTE applies to the instance year of study. Instance.STULOAD will show the proportion taken in each reporting year.

The value in Module.FTE can be recorded to one decimal place and must be between 0 and 300.

Applicable toEngland Northern Ireland Scotland Wales
Coverage

All modules

Notes

This field, together with Instance.STULOAD endeavours to capture more sensitive information than has previously been available about students whose study pattern cannot be categorised as typically full-time, i.e. equivalent in total to 1 FTE per year. It provides a numerical measure of the contents of Instance.MODE. It does not seek to record the teaching load, nor the contact time associated with a student or the course, nor the learning hours, since each of these quantities is subject to variation between providers, and cannot be related to a national norm. No weighting should be given, therefore, to take account of the resourcing requirements of different modules.

For providers operating a credit points system, the proportion of FTE can be calculated from the number of credit points that may be obtained from the module compared with the number of credit points obtainable for that year of the course. Proportion of FTE can also be calculated by reference to a conventional full-time student following the qualification aim. For example, if it is the provider's normal requirement that a student should complete 12 (equally-weighted) modules for a degree which would typically take 3 years for a normal full-time student, then each module would have proportion of FTE calculated as 25% (25). For degrees requiring 12 (equally-weighted) modules over 4 full-time years, each module would have an FTE calculated as 33% (33). This could serve as a benchmark for calculating the FTE of non-standard modules, or modules falling within other programmes of study. For professional courses, the advice of the professional awarding body can be sought. Otherwise providers are asked to make an academic judgement in relating the module to another module of a similar level, and similar academic subject category, which can be related to a 'standard' full-time course.

HESA accepts that the full-time equivalence will not be exact in all cases, but the aim is to give a better approximation than the use of arbitrary conversion factors. It is recognised that the actual student FTE associated with a course may not simply be the aggregation of all modules followed by that student, and it is not expected that there will always be a precise correspondence between the aggregate proportion of FTE fields and Instance.STULOAD. Further guidance on FTE reporting is available here.

In cases where a module is available in two or more qualification aims, with different course requirements, separate module entities are required to be returned.

For example:

Module: Introduction to biogenetics (40 credits)

  • MODID: PGMIntrobiogenetics
  • Masters degree course module worth 40 credits of a 180 credit course
  • MODFTE: 22
  • In this instance the module’s weighting accounts for 22% of the course year.

  • MODID: PGCIntrobiogenetics
  • Post Graduate Certificate course module worth 40 credits of a 120 credit course
  • MODFTE: 33
  • In this instance the module’s weighting accounts for 33% of the course year.

Although the students on these courses may be attending the same lectures, because the outcome weighting of the module differs between qualification aims, separate module entities are required.

The length of this field is 5 characters, however the move to XML enables data to be returned with or without leading zeros or the decimal place, e.g. 005.0 or 5.0 or 5

Quality rules
Quality rules to follow
Reason required

To support student load calculations. Used in splitting student load across HESA cost centres or detailed subjects of study and in allocating FTE to price groups for funding purposes.

Part of
Field length5
Minimum occurrences1
Maximum occurrences1
Schema components
Element: FTE
Data type: FTEType
Related fields
OwnerHESA
Version1.0

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