Handling Student Announcements in Large Classes
Suggestions from Teach-net
I regularly teach a class with 300-350 students.
When I do, a steady stream of student organizations requests class time to make announcements for the first month or so.
I generally say "yes" but ask the students to keep the announcements brief (1-2min), and to finish no later than 2min into the class. Often 3 or 4 groups want to make an announcement on the same day; generally I limit it to 2 groups, and ask the first group to start a couple of minutes before the lecture hour begins.
In all, I probably lose 5 min per class of the first 6-8 classes, a loss of over half an hour of teaching time.
I'm a bit uncomfortable with this. The causes are all "worthy," but this is supposed to be a course in statistics, not a recruitment opportunity, even for "good causes." Many of the students couldn't care less about the announcements.
It seems to me that it would be inappropriate to spam the students with email about these things. I'm not sure that allowing the in-class announcements is any different from spam.
Any ideas about how to handle it? I thought about maybe allowing people to hand out flyers but not to talk, or perhaps posting a list of URLs of groups that requested the chance to make announcements to some special part of the course website.
My policy is "no announcements." The reasons are several. [1] At 5 minutes per day over 28 lectures, that's 140 minutes or nearly 3 class meetings. Given how much material I cover, I need every minute. [2] There are some announcements that I'm not comfortable with, but I don't want to be put in a position, as I'm rushing in those last 4 minutes to get ready to begin, to debate my decision with someone. [3] When I start with 5 minutes of announcements, students gradually begin coming 5 minutes late. By the end of the term, the class effectively starts at 15 after the hour, regardless of whether or not there are announcements. [4] I use Courseweb to send all announcements, even my own, and offer to forward (relevant) student announcements. I make them edit their announcements if I don't think they are relevant or clear. I send no more than 2 emails per week, set up like a digest with a numbered listing at the top of all the announcements and then the text of the announcements below. And then I create a semester's archive of announcements. [5] I tell student groups they are welcome to leaflet *in the lobby of Wheeler* but not in the auditorium, and I enforce that rule by announcing, with microphone, that they are to go to the lobby if I see anyone leafleting in the lecture hall. By mid-semester, students will come up to me to tell me that someone is leafleting in the lecture hall if I don't notice.
Personally, this is a system that works well. Crib at will!
We usually tell students who want to announce something that they have to ask us permission in advance via Email, so we can plan the lectures accordingly. This actually weeds out 99% of the requests.
In our class we also get frequent requests. We have said it is "Class policy" that no announcements are allowed. We have allowed people to write on the chalkboard or to send us a short statement to put on our course web site. These options let the professors focus on teaching the class while the student groups still have a mechanism for reaching out to large groups.
I generally allow these announcements to occur before class time officially starts, with only 1-2 minutes bleed-in time, so long as the student cause has some educational purpose in my estimation, and especially if the announcement relates in some way to the subject matter of the class (this may be easier for a course like mine, bioethics and environmental policy, than statistics). Video Gaming Society, no. CalPIRG yes. Cal Democrats, no, unless Cal Republicans also speak. Fraternity event, no, Chess Club, yes.
I think faculty should support student organizations, in general, and large classes are one way for student orgs to reach a broad cross-section of students. I think spam is not the right analogy: whereas sending a spam message takes one click of a button, making an announcement requires a fellow student to speak cogently in front of a large audience for a short concise announcement.
Five minutes every class is more of a problem: I think the limitation to two groups is appropriate on a first-come first-serve basis.
In my lower division calculus classes I accept only requests directly related to the course. This usually means that representatives of organizations offering tutoring (such as the Student Learning Center and Tau Beta Pi) may make brief announcements.
For all other requests from "worthy causes", I invite the student representative to write a message on the blackboard in front of the class, and I promise to use that blackboard last, so that the message is visible for some time after the beginning of class.
I face the same issues every year as well. This is how I generally deal with the requests:
1) I only allow students to share information if they have contacted me prior to the class.
2) When they do contact me I let them know that they can arrive to class 5 minutes early and write their basic information on the chalk board. I encourage them to be brief and to indicate if they are leaving additional info/handouts at the back of the room. I leave an area on an upper left board for these announcements.
3) At the start of lecture I point out the various "postings" to the class, summarizing in less than 5 seconds each the various announcements and encouraging any one interested to pick up information as they leave.
4) I TRY to remember to remind them that the info. is at the back as class ends. I usually forget.
5) If the announcement is related to the themes and issues of the course (in my case, education), I have one of my GSIs add the information to our Blackboard announcements page as well.
This has worked well for me and students do seem to write down the information if they are interested.
Seems to me that the web is designed for just this purpose. Or you could have students write the topic of their announcement on the board (post it on the wall, whatever) and give their email contact information or a url for interested parties. Often announcements concern only one person in the entire class and everyone else has to sit through them (impatiently) and then there is the potential for someone to make an inflammatory announcement one day that completely derails your class. You could also use this issue to support the content of your class [statistics] and have them determine the probability of any particular student being interested in any given announcement.
I teach a similar size class in Pimentel.
If somebody asks to make an announcement in advance (e.g via email), I usually tell them the following rules and then say it's OK. If they ask on the day, and it's early enough (see below), then it's also OK, otherwise I tell them to email me.
1) Announcements are over by 3:05, period. If not, I interrupt you politely and get the microphone back. I use the last 5 minutes before start time for other questions, my announcements, etc.
2) Please put your announcement on the upper right board. It'll stay there for about 45 minutes, until I need the board. (That's generally enough that they don't mind announcing their stuff early)
3) No handing stuff out after 3:10. If you haven't handed it all out, or you think you're starting too late to get it done, I'll ask you to leave it on the tables by the exits or come back some other day.
Only one group has ever given me trouble about any of this. It was about the fifth or sixth announcement that semester, and when it started to run over the speaker didn't want to give me the microphone back. I just turned to the class and asked whether the class wanted the announcement to continue, or for me to start class. The students were > 90% in favor of moving on to the class, and that got the message across to the announcement-maker.
I get approximately three announcement requests per week around the start of term. Add me to the "No announcements, but handouts are OK" group. Of course the Student Learning Center makes announcements about its class which is Adjunct to mine.
I've had no trouble from people who ask to make announcements, but a couple of times I've arrived at my classroom to find someone addressing the students who have begun to gather. These people weren't eager to stop, but I found that thanking them and cheerfully beginning my lecture did the trick.
Student groups are quite enterprising about leaving announcements in multi-colored chalk on the top back boards of big classrooms.
I edit the Critic's Choice section of the UC Berkeley calendar and help administer the events database for the campus. Please tell your students to enter their events into the campus calendar! That would get them a lot more exposure than a lecture class.
It's a self-service operation they can follow by clicking on the Add an Event button of the calendar page or going directly to <http://www.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/events.pl/POWERSTART>. I often pull those three events that get featured daily on Berkeley.edu from those that are in the database.
Also, this goes for any speakers that you yourselves may have invited and want to publicize.
Bonnie Powell
Public Affairs
I allow announcements, stingily, by class members for stuff that could add to the class social coherence or is intellectually apropos. I occasionally allow a campus office of some kind to do a pitch for a program that would be interesting to students in the particular class. Otherwise, I think it's completely out of line. One minute in a 60-student class is a person-hour of human labor.