Teaching Large Classes

Standing up in front of a large lecture hall can be a challenging way to teach. How can you connect with your students, especailly those way up in the back rows? What are some methods to engage the class and expand your teaching style? Below you will find ideas, tips, specific strategies and example activities developed by fellow geoscience faculty.

Ideas for Large Lecture Sections

This is a synopsis of a discussion held at the 2008 workshop, with a variety of suggestions and links to more information.

Teaching Large Classes

This page contains useful strategies and references about keeping students engaged, using technology and making it work for you, and getting groups to work well.

The First Day of Class

Whether consciously or not, you set the tone for the entire term on the first day. This is your opportunity to stimulate excitement about the course, give students a sense of classroom dynamics, and establish course expectations. This web resource contains ideas for engaging your students, motivating them with relevant topics, establishing a positive classroom environment, and surveying your students to find out what makes them tick.

Interactive Lectures

Making lectures interactive involves giving students, all of them, something to do during the lecture - answering a question, interpreting a graph, or solving a problem - and continuing such activities regularly throughout the term. This module contains detailed information on how to create and deliver interactive lectures, and provides 26 different examples you can use in your lectures.

Lecture Tutorials

Lecture Tutorials are short worksheets that students complete in class to make lecture more interactive. They are designed specifically to address misconceptions and other topics with which students have difficulties. They pose questions of increasing conceptual difficulty to the students, cause conflict with alternative conceptions, and help students construct correct scientific ideas. See examples of lecture tutorials you can use in your lectures.

Interactive Demonstrations

Interactive demonstrations can also be used in classes of all sizes, as projection systems can make demonstrations visible to students in the backs of large classrooms. In this module you can learn about how to illustrate concepts and perhaps even entertain your class with simple demonstrations. There are 16 example demonstrations included.

See examples of large classes

Browse a list of introductory-level courses taught to 150 students or more.