One of the realities of our economic hard times is that faculty are being asked to do more with less. The place where this hits many of us the hardest is our classrooms, where we’re teaching more students than ever.
In some cases we face chronic enrollment increases, in which class sizes might expand by one or two students progressively every year. In other cases we face acute enrollment hikes, in which a class that was once 27 students is suddenly capped at 40 students, a 50 percent increase in class size.
I faced the latter scenario in 2009, and I face it again in the Spring 2011 semester, teaching a class that is substantially—even dauntingly—larger than my usual classes. Both a year ago and today I find myself pondering the same questions: How should my pedagogy change to meet this new teaching context? Or should it?
My classes are student-centered, hands-on, and discussion-oriented, and I rarely hold forth in any kind of lecture mode. Rather than looking at the shift from a smaller class to a supersized class as a hardship, I see it as a challenge: How do I continue to engage students on a dialogic and experiential plane when institutional momentum seems to curtail all but the most traditional forms of pedagogy?
I have no single answer, but I tend to think that technology can play a role in preserving what I value most about small class sizes, in which the most significant exchanges occur between students. As I plan my extra-large classes I keep two technological goals in mind, which stand apart from whatever content or skills I’m teaching:
- I want to use technology to help me maintain the student-centered environment of a smaller class when in fact I’m teaching a much larger class. This is a community-building goal.
- I want to use a range of smaller, low-stakes assignments paced steadily throughout the semester instead of two or three major writing assignments. My intention is to keep students continually engaged throughout the semester rather than “checking in” once mid-semester and once at the end. Let’s call this goal focus-sustaining.
To these ends, I employ many of the same technologies I’ve used for years, such as blogs, but I try others as well. My supersized class in Fall 2009, for example, was the first time that I taught with Twitter. I’ve experimented with wikis, using a version of Brian’s collaborative class notes assignment. I’ve had great success replacing traditional student presentations with Pecha Kuchas, something Jason has written about.
What about you? What have been your own experiences teaching newly enlarged classes? What have been your own pedagogical goals as you shift to teaching larger classes? Are there any technologies or tools that worked particularly well—or not so well? In the comments let’s leave aside questions of classroom management and grading (fodder for future ProfHacker posts, perhaps), and focus strictly on the ways technology might enhance your teaching—and more importantly, your students’ learning—in extra large classes.
[Crowd photograph courtesy of Flickr user Michael Dornbierer / Creative Commons Licensed]
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14 Responses to Teaching Extra-Large Classes and the Role of Technology
drrom - January 24, 2011 at 7:07 pm
Mark, when you write about super-sized classes, it’s important to define what that means. There are many out there who regularly teach the 30-45 student courses. And there are those who often teach the 120 student course. Use of technology varies, even as a requirement according to learning goals and content, between the 30-45 and the 120 person courses. Which are you focusing on here?
mark_sample - January 24, 2011 at 9:22 pm
drrom – Thanks for your note. You’re right that there’s a difference between large and extra-large classes. In my post here I was thinking about classes ranging between 35 and 50 students. In the fall I’ll be teaching a class that is even larger, about 75 students. I haven’t quite figured out what changes in pedagogy—or technology—the 75-student class requires.
Furthermore, whether or not one has teaching assistants with these extra-large classes makes a difference, both in what you can do in-class and what kind of work you can expect from students (and grade).
cnast - January 24, 2011 at 11:29 pm
This term I’m team-teaching a distance ed class of 200 students with one co-instructor and two undergraduate teaching assistants. We’re supplementing the text-heavy class notes with weekly or twice/weekly videos. We’re taking turns creating very plain-and-basic webcam video and uploading these to a Facebook Page for the class. So far we’ve focused on giving instructions and feedback this way (in addition to having the same information available in text). The response from students has been very appreciative and the stats show that the video has had more than double the number of views than the LMS announcement. It’s helped put faces to names in a class with no face-to-face contact, but it’s also become a way to highlight specific information each week.
kateclancy - January 25, 2011 at 12:00 am
Wow, my version of extra-large is not your extra large. I teach a class of 750 every fall. THAT is extra large. I’d love to hear more teaching strategies for that room, because many of the things that supposedly work for larger classes are not actually that effective when you scale up that high.
jimazeki - January 25, 2011 at 1:05 am
I have to echo kateclancy – I teach classes of 500 so 50 sounds luxuriously small. But when I made the move from teaching 50-ish to teaching 500, I went through a similar process, trying to figure out how to use technology to maintain the active learning approach I had used before. The most useful technological tool I adopted was clickers – if you want to do many low-stakes assessments, clickers are great because you can get immediate feedback. You can also use clickers to do peer instruction, which supports the community-building goal. Derek Bruff has a ton of info about clickers (http://derekbruff.com/teachingwithcrs/).
I’ll also say that one of the best investments I made for the big class was simply a wireless mouse that allows me to roam around the room instead of being tied to the computer.
bergtrom - January 25, 2011 at 7:26 am
I use clickers in the classroom in traditional and hybrid classes ranging from 16 to 300+ students. jimazeki has it right! I use discussions and group projects to ‘build community’ and ‘sustain focus’ in hybrid and/or online courses and am figuring out how I might use social media in any of my classes.
hkacpa - January 25, 2011 at 7:51 am
Video of technology in my classroom: http://www.youtube.com/user/aandaupdate?feature=mhum
More information at :http://aandaupdate.com/
My most exciting and current project is adding a webinar feature to my classes. I started this Spring 2010 by teaching students how to use the GoToWebinar software during class. My classes are taught in a computer lab so we can blend this into my normal lectures and use the features such as polling questions to engage students in the class. Once learned, it will allow students my students to access and interact with my classes from anywhere they choose.
I teach all of my classes in a computer lab so students have access to the computer and internet during class. I cover accounting concepts using an E-Book (on-line version of text) and then work related exercises and problems with students on excel worksheets together in class. These topics and exercises are then reinforced by on-line homework assignments that students complete outside of the classroom. Conceptual questions are covered by multi-choice (MC) questions pools and problem oriented questions are covered by algorithmic problems. Students can access the assignments 24/7, have unlimited attempts and they are graded immediately. I use MC pools and algorithmic problems so students will get different questions and numbers each time they attempt the assignment. I use this same system for testing and require that tests are taken during class time to control the risk of cheating.
Another benefit of moving to on-line E-Books, homework assignments and testing is the completion of the move to a paperless classroom. I have not handed out anything on paper or required students to turn in any work on paper for the last 3 semesters (1 and ½ years).
This Fall 2010 I completed the addition of video and screen capture for all of my classes. My voiced and computer screen is recorded during class and a windows media file is produced and placed on Anderson University’s intranet for student access 24/7. I produced and posted over 130 class videos during Fall 2010.
I recently began requiring students to learn to remotely access their personal computers using LogMeIn.com and to communicate via video conferencing on the internet using Skype. The process will be completed during the Spring 2011 semester and will include having all students as well as advisees utilizing these systems. These are great tools that allow interaction with students outside of the normal class time and office hours.
Software utilized in classes:
On-line homework and testing and E-books
• WileyPlus
• McGraw Hill Connect
• McGraw Hill Homework Manager
Class video production
• Camtasia
web based conferencing
• Skype
Web based remote computer access
• LogMeIn
Live, interactive Webinars to be utilized in Spring 2011.
• GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar
Microsoft Office and web
• Excel
• Word
• Internet Explorer
pjsamson - January 25, 2011 at 10:29 am
After teaching for over 25 years I was assigned an intro course of about 40 students. Answering a plea from my chair to increase enrollment I changed the name of the course from ‘Weather and Climate’ to ‘Extreme Weather and Climate.’ Now I have over 200 in the course each semester. (Hint: The adjective ‘Extreme’ can be added to almost any subject, try it yourself.)
To make the large class seem smaller I developed a web application called LectureTools (http://www.lecturetools.com) that allows more kinds of questions than multiple-choice, encourages students to pose questions, allows student to type notes synchronized with slides, records data on student participation, and facilitates ‘Peer Instruction.’ Student report they like it better than clickers 10 to 1. I offer the system as voluntary but >90% show up each day with their laptops (we’re adding an ability to also participate by texting). Feel free to try it out.
proftucker - January 25, 2011 at 11:51 am
75 students is “regular size” where I teach, the only reason it isn’t more is the physical capacity of the room.
As pjsamson mentioned, “Peer Instruction” is a way to get the small classroom feeling / learning outcomes in the large classroom. Eric Mazur of Harvard was speaking on this very subject at a local university in the fall. Here is an excellent video of his presentation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn1DLFnbGOo
The technology is minimal — clickers at most. It is the philosophical change, the pedagogical re-think of how to modify your content and delivery to pull this off.
halavais - January 25, 2011 at 12:26 pm
So, I’ve taught courses in the 350-400 person range. It’s really hard to break out of “broadcast mode” but I still tried to get them to sit in consistent groups, and work on small-group projects.
I had my lectures video recorded, and available same-day. I was disappointed (though not surprised) that lecture attendance dropped throughout the semester. Then I started talking to students about this and discovered that they had spontaneously formed watching groups, where they would pop popcorn, get into groups watch the lecture, and stop it and discuss things when they didn’t understand an idea or thought it was interesting. Jaded as I am–and yes, I know this wasn’t everyone–I was shocked that this was happening, and very pleased.
I also provided an opportunity to blog, and many students did. You definitely have to change the ways in which you assess blogs at that scale, and rely more on peer-assessment and self-assessment, but doing so made me think differently about those forms of assessment, even in much smaller classes.
I now teach at a university where 40 person classes are unusual, and 400 person classes impossible, but I found a lot of what I learned teaching in big classes moves back-and-forth across scales.
ethnicam - January 25, 2011 at 2:27 pm
I know this goes against pedagogical scholarship, but the subject you teach ought to impact your pedagogy. Also, there is a difference in how one might effectively teach 75 students in an upper division course, a general survey course, a required course or an elective. Is the accumulation of information and learning meant to be progressive, as in a math or science class (as distinct from, say, scaffolded in a social science class)? Then something like clickers are a great source of feedback before moving on to the next problem set. Are you teaching in the humanities? Then, imho, in a class of 75 students it would pay to work on your lecturing skills since each text is distinct and students expect, and thrive on, good lecturing in humanities courses.
Are there writing requirements? Do you have teaching assistants who lead separate sections? I mean, there’s no one-size-fits-all pedagogy for large/medium/small classes, as much as pedagogy scholarship wants to claim that there is (e.g., you must never lecture for more than 15 minutes; you must move about the class; you must write on the board or post on a Ppt all of the main points of your lesson…otherwise you will bore your students). How about some more context about you as a teacher? What is it you LIKE to do in your teaching, at least in terms of HOW you teach and what you think makes your teaching effective? What is it you think you might have to sacrifice in teaching the same subject to a larger group of students? What won’t you negotiate about the way you teach in the change?
mark_sample - January 26, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Thanks, everybody, for your excellent comments here! It’s important to note that what counts as “extra-large” is extremely relative. What’s considered large in one context is the norm in another. A small liberal arts college might have one definition of “large” class size, while a state university might have another. It varies by discipline as well. I can only speak from my own perspective, in an English Department where student work most often takes the form of written papers. Thus our change from 25 to 40 students (and next fall, to 75 students in some classes) is a significant shift.
As several readers point out, what’s most important seems to be adopting a style and method that suits both your existing teaching style and your preferred pedagogical model. And, I think, the more we do it, the better we get at it.
mzamon - January 31, 2011 at 9:12 am
I am encouraged by this whole discussion — but surprised that no one mentioned tech support or support for new technologies–do I assume it gets an A+ at your institutions? No PC/MAC issues?
Mary