Is my course prep normal?

When I started teaching, it took me four to six hours to prep a brand new lecture. Intro or not. No one told me if this was reasonable, but then again, I certainly didn't ask. I was exceptionally embarrassed by the sheer amount of time I spent before each 60 minute lecture.

I've since taught my intro class several times, but I still spend between 60-90 minutes on prep. Mostly I have ppt slides already prepared from previous years, but I still work out example problems for board work. I also usually need to make minor changes to slides for various reasons (new idea, new problems book, etc.) My upper level classes typically take three to five hours to prep. Still. Good grief.

My last post was a poll that inquired about your lecture prep time. Many of you clarified in the comments section about the different time requirements of different types of class preparations. Thank goodness for the clarifications, especially since my sweet CPP declared that the "poll makes no sense." (Love ya, CPPy! Is baseball season over yet?)

Many of you, I'm sure are faster at class prep. (I'm looking at you, GMP and Dr. Pion! And thanks for your enlightening posts!)

I want to work with JaneB! Care to join me, Namnezia and pika? JaneB wrote,

"My department has a workload model. It assumes 6 hours of prep time per new classroom hour and 2 hours per old (i.e. repeated) classroom hour, which is a general average across the whole (highly interdisciplinary) department."

That's pretty darn close to my current course prep times. Maybe I should think about relocating?