Preface#

The Department of Physics has, for over two decades, allocated and balanced the teaching and administrative workload for academic and research staff in an open and transparent manner. Colleagues are allocated a target workload as a fraction of a nominal full load, where that fraction is determined by a number of factors (see Section 3).

Each year the Director of Education (DoE) is tasked by the Head of Department (HoD) with allocating teaching and administrative jobs for the following academic year such that each member of staff has a load that approaches their nominal target allocation for that year. This is done in consultation with all staff, and attempts to simultaneously produce balanced loads, where staff are given a range of jobs across different types of teaching and administration, and to optimise the programme such that the right people are allocated to each job (“round pegs for round holes”). This latter target is critical to providing the best possible teaching for undergraduates, in order to maximise student satisfaction.

SWAMP vs SWAP#

The model in use until the 2025-6 academic year accounted for teaching activities and directly related activities alone and the results transparently displayed within our System for Workload Allocation in Physics (SWAP) available at https://swap.dmaitre.phyip3.dur.ac.uk/activities/ We are able to maintain a level of workload equity that is the envy of other departments, and we in general avoid much of the internecine trouble and dissatisfaction that accompanies opaque workload distribution. As such it is an excellent tool in our push to create a workplace that is compliant with best practice in Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI), and indeed the PWS has featured in our recent submissions for Athena Swan and Juno awards.

From the 2026-7 academic year we now also include Research and Citizenship within the our workload allocation model, so aligning it with new university workload policies. Activities under the headings of Citizenship, Research and Teaching which, under the university policies, attract a tariffed time allocation are included under the appropriate headings. This full allocation model is known as the System for Workload Allocation (Modified) in Physics (SWAMP) and will be used for duty allocation in academic year 2026-7 onwards. Individual staff members can find their split between Citizenship, Research and Teaching (CRT) and tariffed activities allocated under these headings at https://swamp.dmaitre.phyip3.dur.ac.uk/activities/. The factors underpinning an individuals CRT split, their ratio of tariffed activities to each of their CRT elements and their teaching load compared with the distribution within the department, normalised to full time equivalent (FTE) can be found under the individual staff member’s details upon log-in.

As in the case of SWAP, it is possible to see who teaches on which module, however, it is no longer possible to show an overview of the activities of all colleagues activities due to privacy concerns, hence a colleagues place on the FTE normalised teaching load distribution has been added to maximise fairness and transparency within these constraints.

At present, in the absence of significant buyouts or allocated research time we do not undertake any accounting for research activities providing a valuable bulwark against research activities being marginalised for any member of staff. By allocating teaching and administration in a fair and equitable way, we explicitly leave an agreed proportion of each member of academic track staff’s time free to pursue their own research programmes

Last updated 2026/03/29