The list below provides suggestions for conducting large lecture courses and associated pedagogy with reduced resources (less time, funds, support from GSIs, readers, other staff support). At first glance, these items do not appear to save time or energy. Indeed, some of the items require some upfront time on the instructor’s part. But in the end, all of them can save time, money, anxiety, and end of semester work on your part and on the part of students. Regardless of constricting budgets, these suggestions are also good pedagogy. The basic tenant is this: engage students more fully and actively in less material, clearly thought-out, and they will learn better, which saves everyone time and money.
Below we have provided both quick steps you can take and references for more information on each.
Once you and your students know where you’re going, the trip is easier and more efficient. And often the very act of creating learning goals results in reducing the amount of material to be covered, since you have brought your course into more focus.
Steps to take:
See UC Berkeley examples and read more about developing goals Creating Course Goals [pdf]
“The more teaching you do, the harder it is for students to prioritize what's important” (Tomorrow’s Professor Message 21:” Teaching Large Classes: Strategies for Improving Student Engagement”). Content Tyranny is a problem for most college instructors, that is, trying to cover too much material. The result is usually opposite--less material absorbed at a more superficial level--of what we hope for. Be harsh with yourself and cut the material that is not absolutely essential. The authors of “Content Tyranny” suggest that lectures should cover the following kinds of material:
Steps to take: Read through your syllabus and mark every topic as either “essential” “helpful.” Cut out all the “helpful”—move them to “suggested further reading.” If you’ve marked everything “essential,” ask a colleague to mark your syllabus the same way. If all else fails (and 90% of the time, you’ll be able to cut material), you need to redesign the goals of the class, perhaps in consultation with your department curriculum committee. But this is rarely necessary, if you are honest about what can be cut. Remember, you cannot teach everything in one course: it just doesn’t work. (And if you could, your students wouldn’t remember, anyway).
Rely on students to get facts from their reading. Devote lectures to more in depth (see Deep and Surface Approaches to Learning) discussion and analysis. For instance, begin each class session with a question that you will devote the session to answering. This also leads to more focus and engagement. Practical Pointers on Preparing and Giving Lectures covers these ideas as well as others that will lead to more effective lecture classrooms.
Steps to take: Turn a general topic into a question (the same thing we ask students to do for papers). Instead of “The ways lodgepole pines propagate” make it “Why do lodgepole pines need fire to propagate?” Instead of “The Rise of the Middle Class in Postwar America?” make it “What factors were the major drivers in the rise of the middle class?” And you can ask for ideas at the beginning of class, as a way of involving the students in answering the questions.
“What professors do in their class matters far less than what they ask their students to do.” (“Teaching for Long-Term Retention and Transfer,” Halpern and Hakel). It’s difficult for anyone to sit for 50 or 80 minutes and simply listen. Attention span begins to fade after about 20 minutes, so you need to stop every 20 minutes or so and do something new.
Steps to take:
See Three by Five Cards, Alternatives to Groups, Using Groups in Classes and Encouraging Study Groups, Resources for Using Groups in Class, and Forming Groups in Class.
Consider having your students sit in lecture with others from their section, and you can then direct exercises and questions to them by section. Not only will they be more inclined to engage with people they already know, but you will be reinforcing the importance of the sections and making the course seem more of a unified whole.
See The Change-Up in Lectures, Activity Breaks—A Push for Participation and Beating the Numbers Game: Effective Teaching in Large Classes. Other excellent resources for activities are The Interactive Lecture from Carleton College and Barbara Davis, “Personalizing the large lecture,” in Tools for Teaching (Jossey Bass, 2009).
It’s frustrating to assign reading for your students and then during lectures, in group discussions, or in the results of quizzes you come to realize that few students are actually reading the assigned material. Robert Magnan (Magnan, R. (1990). 147 Practical tips for teaching professors. Madison: Magna.)believes that it is best to help students achieve critical thinking skills before they read, in order to aid their analysis and evaluation of texts.
Steps to take:
Don’t rely just on midterms and finals to let students know how they’re doing. By providing them with frequent feedback on their progress, you ultimately save time and (and anguish). Not all assessments need to have grades attached.. Quick, frequent assessments help students to focus on areas they need work on. See Suggestions for Early Feedback, Three x Five Cards, and the excellent Classroom Assessment Techniques (Angelo and Cross, Jossey Bass 1993).
Steps to take:
Feedback on
their learning:
Hand out 3
x 5 cards at the end of the class and ask students to identify what the major
points covered were. This can be anonymous or not. Collect them, skim them, and
begin the next class by talking about their responses. Ask those students
who were off to see you or their GSI, or to review their notes, etc. 2) Ask
them to identify the “muddiest point” in the lecture. 3) Begin the lecture by
soliciting questions (on cards or not) based on their reading for the day. 4)
Stop a lecture at any time after a difficult topic and ask them to explain it to
an intelligent high school student who knows nothing about the topic.
Feedback on
your teaching:
Using the
same techniques, ask them about the pace of lectures, use of PowerPoint,
clarity of examples/explanations, flow of the course or anything else you
would like to know about.
Problem sets, midterms, and finals are in one form or another standard in many classes. However, we all learn in different ways, and when you provide different ways for students to demonstrate their abilities, you are allowing for more to succeed in your class.
It’s important, however, to not randomly assess, but to have some sort of plan. See Using Rubrics for Assessing Learning or Improving Instruction.
Steps to take: Oral reports. Group projects. Replace a midterm with an oral exam. Students can sign up for five minute meetings with you over an extended period. This also gets them into your office.
First of all, by providing feedback and smaller assignments throughout the semester, you can lessen the impact of the final exam, and you and the students will not have to place so much weight on a single end-of semester activity. Such “high stakes testing” situations may be good from time to time, but should not necessarily be the norm.
Steps to take: Have students produce
Fuller explanations and more examples at alternatives to final exams.
If you must give multiple-choice exams, develop questions that test higher-order thinking skills. One format we particularly like is using “necessary, probable, and improbable,” but it can be very difficult to construct a good question:
“Identify each consequence as either 1) necessary, 2) probable, 3) improbable.
Eliminating restrictions on embryonic stem cell research will result in
See also General Guidelines for Developing Multiple Choice Exams and Examination Tips from the University of Maryland, as well as “Multiple Choice and Matching Tests” in Tools for Teaching, Barbara Gross Davis, (Jossey-Bass, 2009)
Build a robust syllabus:
Build your syllabus online keeping it dynamic and always available to students.
Include a variety of media (called "rich media") and links to
supporting materials found in other locations on your course site.
Get help building your syllabus online here.
Use bSpace as your central repository for all supporting
materials, resources, and supplemental learning activities.
Have your
students review media such as movie clips, audio files, photographs, and articles
in between classes. Post links to online news sources or blogs in a Forum and
inspire an interactive discussion among students. Organize media in your
Resources folder and point students to new material each week. Assess critical
thinking by uploading your media to the Assignments Tool and requiring brief
inline reflections from each student before your next class.
Learn about uploading a YouTube video here.
Reduce class time spent making announcements:
Spend less time communicating logistics such as due dates, office hours, and
changes in expectations by using the Announcements Tool in bSpace. Post links
to current events that relate to coursework, upcoming exam reminders, or bring
attention to a favorite forum post.
Get help adding an announcement to your bSpace site here.
Reach your whole class with one email
address:
Communicate to the whole class at once by sending an email to one simple
address. These emails, along with any attachments, will be archived in bSpace
for everyone to review (in case it gets “lost” in cyberspace).
Get help setting up your Email Archive Tool here.
Save time and number crunching using an
online gradebook:
Students love the Gradebook Tool. Post grades online to reduce endless email
back-and-forth. Let bSpace track your weighting structure so you can focus on
keeping your assignments meaningful. After setting up categories and weights
using the Gradebook Tool in bSpace, feel free to add an assignment, skip one,
change the point value of another – bSpace will perform all necessary
grade calculations so that at the end of the semester, you can simply export
your final grades and import them right into E-grades.
Get help setting up a Gradebook here.
Keep easy track of assignments:
Use the Assignments Tool to receive and track assignments. Plug in a deadline
and then when students upload their work, it will be marked as on time or late.
Review work and return it to the student all online. Allow for drafts and
official revisions and then present a final grade right on the assignment inline.
Get help using the Assignments Tool here.
Reduce paper and time trying to locate
hard copy of students' work:
bSpace
creates a private online folder between you and each of your students
automatically when you use the Drop Box. They upload their work, you comment on
it, and upload it back to them. Works just like an inbox on your desk only you
don’t waste time (or trees) in class passing paper around.
Get help using the Drop Box here.
Webcasting for review:
Allowing students to review class lectures can reduce the number of questions
posed during class time. It may help some rely less on note taking and more on
listening and understanding the concepts during class. Webcasting your class
may help you rethink the way you present material. You may consider reducing
the amount of chalkboard explanation in favor of creative PowerPoint slides
that can be reused and reviewed at later times in the semester.
Read more about webcasting on the ETS website.
Help students engage more deeply in the class:
You can cut down on facts presented in class, leaving more time for analysis.
Have students sign up for a research group and post history, facts, or glossary
items to the Wiki – an online collaboration space in bSpace –
making content available to all students before the next class. All students
can edit the same content keeping it a live and ever-improving document. Or you
could have student groups post their content to the Forum and require all
students to review the post prior to class time or continuation on a project.
Get help on using the Wiki here and the Forum Tool here.
Conduct a quick assessment:
If your class too big to track how individuals are doing between exams, have
your students take a quick anonymous poll in bSpace to gauge whether or not a
concept was understood. Go deeper using the Quiz and Survey tool to “test”
knowledge or survey students on their progress.
Get help setting up a Poll here or contact ETS for a consultation regarding the use of the Quiz
& Survey Tool.
Use clickers to get instant feedback on
your students' comprehension of a concept:
You can poll students on the fly and
adjust your content appropriately. This saves time spent unnecessarily on
concepts that are already understood and allows you to follow-up only where
needed. Keep students engaged by asking thoughtful questions they can answer
individually, and then asking the class to respond to the collective results
Read more about the uses of clickers in this Educause
article.
Consult with librarians in advance for specific ideas to support your research-based assignments:
Helping students develop critical information search and
evaluation skills will improve the quality of their research-based assignments. Effective Assignments Using Library Resources provides some guidance for creating assignments that develop research skills,
but do not necessarily result in a research paper. Additional ideas for alternatives to the research paper [pdf] may be welcome to instructors of large-enrollment
classes.
Library liaisons and subject specialists work
directly with instructors and academic departments to suggest strategies that
effectively leverage Library resources for large classes, and provide
customized instruction sessions to help orient students
to the research process and the UCB Library. Examples from the Mellon Institute demonstrate
various ways librarians can assist in designing assignments and creating
course-specific resources.
Direct students to research guides and tutorials:
If devoting class time to a research session is not feasible, the Library also provides a number of Tutorials and Research Guides to help students learn how to locate information and use Library resources more effectively.
If you’re interested in reading more, with even more ideas, here are a number of excellent resources. In addition to our own suggestions and materials, below, we strongly suggest you take a look at Teaching in Changing Times, from the University of Washington and Large Classes: A Teaching Guide, from the University of Maryland.
Good practice in undergraduate education:
1. encourages contact between students and faculty,
2. develops reciprocity and cooperation among students,
3. encourages active learning,
4. gives prompt feedback,
5. emphasizes time on task,
6. communicates high expectations, and
7. respects diverse talents and ways of learning.