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Teaching Large Classes

Strategies for dealing with teaching problems and student problems

• Staff find it difficult to meet the needs of all students
• It's difficult to keep track of everything
• There isn't time to meet all the course objectives
• Large groups can be heterogeneous
• Not enough books in the library
• Students easily become isolated
• Students don't have the necessary independent learning skills and group work skills
• Lecture rooms are too small
• It's hard to tell if students have understood the lecture material
• It is hard to achieve consistency between tutors in seminars and in marking
• It's difficult to mark group projects fairly
• Impossible to give students detailed feedback in writing
• Self and peer assessment may be a solution but students can't do it without training
• Difficulty in motivating students

Points at which to address the problems of large classes

• Topic design
  • Teaching modes
  • Assessment task design
• Teaching strategies
  • Focusing on the essential
  • Include administration, assessment and feedback strategies into classroom activities
• Assessment design

Topic design

• Identify essential learning and make that the focus of teaching and assessment
• Re-conceptualise the teaching modes (it's an opportunity for innovation)
• Plan to overtly develop independent learning activities and skills
• If its essential and it moves assess it, and assess it differently

Teaching strategies

• Lecturing Strategies
  • Use the time well (not tell them all you know)
  • Use a preparatory slide to review what has been already covered
  • Summarise at the end of lecture and indicate what is essential for what is to come
  • Use lectures for brief review of learning (problem solving, quizzes, questions, maps)
• Seminars
  • Combine mini-lectures with independent group activities
  • Include consultation times in seminar sessions
  • Make time for group work planning in seminars

Assessment

• Reduce the size of assignments
• Reduce the number of assignments
• Conduct in-class assessments
• Consider self and peer assessment
• Consider group projects
• If it's essential, assess it
• Collaborate across topics

Principles to guide new conceptions of teaching

• Clarify what is essential learning for the topic, the year, for the course
• Focus on the essential
• Ensure that colleagues & students have a common understanding about what is essential learning & how it is demonstrated
• Remember that there are always better ways to teach and assess

Resources

Teaching Large Classes
This website is hosted by University of Queensland TEDI website.This AUTC-funded project offers guidelines for managing, teaching and assessing large classes. It offers case studies, reports and relevant links.

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