The amount of time needed for study is different for everyone. Use our Time Calculator to help you think about how much time you have available.
Before you decide to study, it’s important to think about how much time you have available and how much time you will need to study your courses.
As a guide we suggest you allow around 10 hours of study a week for every course you do, but for some courses you might need more time. Most of our courses are 16 teaching weeks (the period that we teach the course), with four additional weeks to allow for assessment extensions, resubmissions and marking.
How much time do you have available?
Our Time Calculator will help you calculate how much time you spend on different activities in a typical week.
It also gives advice on how much study you could do in your free time. The results are only a guide, but they will help you think about how you can fit study in.
How long will it take?
How long your qualification will take will depend on on how many courses you need to do to complete your qualification and how many courses you study at a time.
For information on how our qualifications are structured and ideas for what to think about when deciding how many courses to study at a time, see the pages below:
Deciding how many courses to study at a time
Get help to plan your study
If you need help to think about how you can fit study into your life or to decide what qualification to study you can contact a Student Advisor to talk about your goals. They can help you:
- Decide which qualification best suits your study and career goals and what course to start with
- Plan your study load to make sure it suits how much time you have available
- Work out if you have any study or experience can be cross credited to one of our qualifications.
Call or email and ask to talk to a Student Advisor:
- customerservices@openpolytechnic.ac.nz
- 0508 650 200.
When will you start your course?
Many of our courses are offered monthly to give our learners the flexibility to decide when they want to start their course.
Check the course page to see the start and end dates. Most courses are 16 teaching weeks, with four additional weeks to allow time if you need assessment extensions or resubmissions and for us to do our marking.
Some of our learners stagger their course start dates to help them manage their workload. If you want to do this, remember to think about how much time you will need for study when your courses overlap. In the example below the workload will be around 40 hours each week in month four.
It may be better to start a new course every two months. This would mean the peak workload would be around 20 hours a week.
Get help to plan your study
If you need help to think about how you can fit study into your life or to decide what qualification to study or how many courses to study at a time you can contact a Student Advisor to talk about your goals. They can help you:
- Decide which qualification best suits your study and career goals and what course to start with
- Plan your study load to make sure it suits how much time you have available
- Work out if you have any study or experience can be cross credited to one of our qualifications.
Call or email and ask to talk to a Student Advisor:
- customerservices@openpolytechnic.ac.nz
- 0508 650 200.