Teaching Large Classes
Teaching large classes is particularly challenging, and newer faculty are likely to be assigned to teach at least a few of them. The resources below can help you keep your students actively engaged and minimize the time you spend grading, effectively and efficiently.
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HideStudents in a large lecture hall at Wake Forest University's School of Medicine are actively engaged through technology. Photo from WFUSM's media photo website.
Jump down to: Keeping students engaged in large lecture classes * Making technology work for you * Getting groups to work well
Keeping students engaged in large lecture classes
Large lecture halls impose physical and logistical constraints on what you can do effectively. But there are tried and true techniques to keep students interested:
- Interactive Lecture techniques can be used in any size classroom, as can Just-in-Time Teaching. (These links take you to the Starting Point pages on teaching techniques.) Interactive lectures are lectures interspersed with brief in-class activities that require students to use the information or concepts presented in the lecture. In Just-in-Time Teaching, students respond electronically to web-based assignments, due a few hours before class. The instructor then briefly reviews student responses to see what to focus on during the class period.
- Beating the Numbers Game: Effective Teaching in Large Classes (more info) lists in-class activities, out-of-class group exercises, and other ideas for keeping students engaged in large classes. The author, Richard Felder, is a chemical engineering professor at North Carolina State University, and an active researcher on the topic of how people learn.
- How to Create Memorable Lectures offers tips on getting and keeping students' attention and giving them opportunities to review and apply important concepts. This article is from Rick Reis' Tomorrow's Professor Mailing List. (more info)
- Big, But Not Bad, (more info) from the Chronicle of Higher Education, tells the stories of several professors who teach very popular large classes. Each of the successful professors describes his or her approach to teaching large classes. The article also lists several books on teaching large classes, for those interested in further reading.
- The effective use of technology and group work are two ways to enhance large classes, increase student engagement, and minimize the time you spend grading.... See the next sections of this page for details.
Making technology work for you
As technology becomes more complex, it becomes more daunting. But it can also be quite helpful. Here are some examples of time-saving, effort-saving technologies proven to be effective in teaching, especially in assessment.- Classroom Communication Systems are electronic response systems you can have students use to respond to multiple choice, in-class questions you pose about the course material. These systems can help you and your students to assess their learning as you go, rather than waiting until the next quiz or exam. The instantaneous feedback allows students who get the wrong answer to ask you for further information immediately. This link lists several logistical questions you'll want to explore before implementing an electronic student response system. If you decide against the technological solution, there are other ways to conduct a quick in-class assessment.
- Teaching with Technology, (more info) from Carnegie Mellon's Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence, covers best practices of teaching with technology, tools (including Blackboard), examples of teaching with technology, copyright and fair use, and relevant publications.
- From Rick Reis' Tomorrow's Professor Mailing List (more info)
- Online Multiple Choice Questions With Rationale Answer Statements: An Interesting Use of the WWW (more info) reviews the use of multiple choice, online weekly problem sets, with rationales, in a large biology class. The instructors examined the rationales for commonly missed questions, allowing them to identify and address areas of student confusion.
- Teaching Naked: Why Removing Technology from Your Classroom Will Improve Student Learning describes several ways to use technology outside of the classroom, so that class time can be devoted to deeper learning.
- The Brave New World of Classroom Technology describes the effective use of video clips, podcasts, wikis, animations, simulations, and more to enrich the classroom experience.
- Using the Internet to Promote Inquiry-based Learning. (more info) This electronic paper describes "a structured approach to inquiry-based learning that uses the World Wide Web as a primary information resource."
- The Virtual Resource Site for Teaching with Technology (more info) provides resources for developing an online course or course components.
Getting groups to work well
Many students, particularly high-achievers, resist group work. Yet the ability to work well in a group is an essential skill for most college graduates. In addition, students who learn in collaborative settings both learn and retain 1.5 times as much as students who learn individually (Johnson et al., 1998).- Doing Collaborative Learning. (more info) From the National Institute for Science Education, this page focuses on how to implement collaborative learning in the classroom, from structuring your class (more info) so that students "buy in" to the method, to creating groups (more info) (and dealing with group dynamics).
- Cooperative Learning. This Starting Point page defines cooperative learning and explores why and how to use it. It also provides a list of online resources and cooperative learning exercises.
- Cooperative Learning in Technical Courses: Procedures, Pitfalls, and Payoffs, (more info) by Richard Felder and Rebecca Grant, details successful strategies for applying cooperative learning techniques to quantitative problem solving, in and out of class.
- Postings from Rick Reis' "Tomorrow's Professor" Mailing List (more info) :
- Integrating Team Exercises With Other Course Work (more info) provides a list of rationales for incorporating group work in your classes, going well beyond the usual reasons (building skills students will need in their jobs, improved learning). It also describes several strategies for integrating team exercises into your course, emphasizing the importance of group work to students.
- Making Effective Use of Your Peers (more info) is an excerpt from a book for engineering students. It succinctly summarizes research findings on the benefits of studying in groups, findings which may help you to persuade your students to give group work a try.
- Innovation in Large Lectures - Teaching for Active Learning (Following this link takes you to the SERC Catalog description of this journal article.) The journal article includes instructions presented to students for effective interactions in cooperative groups, the types of responses expected from students, and strategies for managing cooperative groups in a dynamic atmosphere in a large enrollment lecture course.
