Teaching Large Classes
Teaching large classes may present unique challenges, from grading to creating classroom communities, from answering e-mails to engaging the students in the classroom or online environment. However, these challenges can be reduced by planning and structuring the courses. This guide suggests what instructors can do at different points of the semester to support learning for a large group and better connect with their students while saving time!In the weeks leading up to the first day of classes, taking the time to thoughtfully prepare for your large course will set you up for success before you even begin interacting with students.
Before the Semester Starts
In the weeks leading up to the first day of classes, taking the time to thoughtfully prepare for your large course will set you up for success before you even begin interacting with students.
Course Design
Having a well-designed course and structure may reduce the number of questions you might receive from the students and help them get a good start on a successful semester. Plan for how you will structure your course, scaffold student learning, and general ideas for how you would like students to engage with content during the semester. While you don't have to have the specifics of the entire course planned out, having a general map of how the course will progress will help students understand expectations for the course.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- What are the best types of assessment for achieving your course's learning objectives? Instructors often default to high-stakes multiple-choice exams, but are they meeting diverse students' needs and learning preferences?
- What are the best learning activities for your learning objectives and assessments in a large classroom?
- How will you organize content in your course so students can find the information they need to succeed?
- What elements can be cut or condensed from the content you want to cover without compromising your learning objectives?
- Vary your assessments by including more options than multiple-choice or true/false questions and adding formative assessments. Varying your assessment methods doesn't have to lead to more grading on your part—having more frequent but smaller stakes assignments that are quick to grade can speed up your work.
- While lecturing is often necessary, adding engaging, hands-on, or interactive activities to the lecture can maximize student learning and increase students' sense of community to motivate them. Consider adopting methods you are familiar with using in your smaller courses to account for more students.
- Build modules in Canvas with a consistent structure, linking all relevant course information for that week/unit/chapter.
- Add a course calendar/schedule to the syllabus so that students (and you) can keep track of their progress in the course and will know what is needed to be successful each week.
- Think critically about elements in your course that might not be essential for student learning and cut them from your course plan.
Grading & Feedback
Grading load is a big concern for instructors who teach large classes, so it is important to determine a reasonable amount and timeframe for you and your students. Before the semester starts, take the time to think through and set your assessments and assignment schedule, including a point breakdown. Having this information finalized before the start of the semester will ensure that students can plan their schedules and workload accordingly. Remember that the students take multiple courses, work full-time or part-time, and engage in co-curricular activities. Many of them plan and schedule their time at the beginning of the semester, so it is important to clarify the assessment schedule and point values. Having this information set will also enable them to self-monitor their progress throughout the semester.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- Do you have enough time to give feedback for the assessments based on the schedule you've set? Especially if you’d like your students to use your feedback in the subsequent assessments, you may want to think carefully about the timing of feedback throughout the semester.
- What are the policies on late work, academic integrity, AI use, etc., and how are they communicated to students? Are you flexible on certain policies and firm on others?
- How will you collect student work and give feedback?
- What assignments will require more feedback from you? What assignments don't need feedback but can be graded for completion?
- Build a reasonable schedule for feedback. Be sure you are considering when feedback will be provided when assigning due dates, both to not overwhelm your students with work and not to assign more than you can grade in a reasonable timeframe.
- Establish multiple opportunities early in the semester to provide written feedback to students. It is important to give more feedback earlier in the semester so that the students will know how to study for your class and be successful for the rest of the semester.
- Make sure that the policies on late work, academic integrity, and AI use (https://prodev.illinoisstate.edu/pedagogy/syllabus/) are shared on the syllabus and restated throughout the semester.
- SpeedGrader is a great tool for quickly giving feedback on Canvas. It is available for assignments, discussions, and quizzes. Canvas quizzes are also a great tool for self-assessment, as they can provide immediate feedback to students.
- Create your grade book in Canvas, including due dates and points assigned for each item. Ensure that the grading scheme and scale are set in Canvas.
Communication
Clear communication and sharing expectations are essential in large classes to reduce the number of email questions you receive from the students and to allow students to progress through the course more independently. Establish a plan and expectations for how you will communicate with students during the semester. Once you know this information, be sure to have it written in multiple locations, such as your syllabus and Canvas course home page.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- What is a reasonable turnaround time for your e-mail responses to students?
- What timeframe can you guarantee that you will provide feedback on student assessments?
- In what ways will you make yourself available to students (office hours, scheduled appointments, before and after class, etc.)?
- Document your communication preferences and grading turnaround time in your syllabus. Be as specific and direct as possible.
- Post office hours & email on your Canvas home page and syllabus
- Send a welcome message or announcement before the course starts to communicate course policies, introduce yourself to students, and help them be prepared for the first day.
- Create sign-up slots in the Canvas Calendar for the first few weeks of classes if you want to have one on one meetings with students. While you don't have to require these or meet with every student, creating the space for meetings will set a welcoming tone for the semester and help you to learn more about your students.
First Week of Classes
The first week of the semester is the ideal time to lay the groundwork for your course expectations and get to know your students. Having spent time prepping for your course before the start of the semester, it is important to share with your students how they can succeed in your class.
Articulate Policies & Goals
Dedicating time to discussing course policies with your students can prevent issues later in the semester and reduce the questions you’ll receive from your students. Use this time to let students know what they can expect from you and this semester's course.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- How can you account for and address student perspectives on these policies?
- How can you ensure that the students actually know and understand the policies?
- How will you share the major goals of the course with students?
- Walk your students through your Canvas site, highlighting where they should go to find information like course schedules, your contact information, readings, etc. You can record your screen while you narrate navigating through the course.
- Conduct a low-stakes or zero-point syllabus quiz or assignment to assess students' understanding of where to find things in the course and your expectations.
- Create a discussion thread for students to ask questions and give feedback about the course plan and policies that they may not understand. Encourage classmates to respond to their peers’ posts if they know the answers.
- Include an at-a-glance overview of major learning outcomes, assessments, and a schedule in your syllabus so students can quickly understand what they will learn through the semester and plan accordingly.
Get to Know Your Students & Start Building a Classroom Community
While you may not have the time to get to know each student personally, as the instructor, you can still create opportunities for connections with students who want it. Regardless of whether students take you up on it, letting them know and experience that you are approachable and care about them leads them to care more about the course.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- How can you make your large course feel more like a small course?
- What small actions/steps can you take as the instructor to make each student feel seen and valued in the classroom space?
- How can students hold each other accountable in the course?
- Try to learn as many student names as possible so you can call them by their names in class. Another way to accomplish this is to have the students use name tents. This will also help the students learn each other’s names.
- Let students know about things outside your instructor role—share your research, hobbies, and interests. Sharing these things can help the students know more about your human side, increasing your approachability.
- Share a survey asking about students’ background on the topic of the course, their needs during the semester, and their expectations for you as their instructor (e.g., why they are taking classes, what classes they have taken related to this, what you can do to help them succeed in class, etc.). The information can be used to pace your courses, provide supplementary resources for the students, and customize content relevant to the students. This survey can be anonymous to promote more honest answers.
- Include asynchronous discussions where students can introduce themselves to you and each other. If you include introductory discussions like this, be sure you are also willing to take the time to engage with the students who post.
- Facilitate small group introductions through icebreakers or other informal, low-stakes, in-class activities. Introducing collaborative work early on will make student-to-student interactions a routine, normalized part of the class. Encourage students to share contact information with their small groups for additional support outside of the classroom.
Throughout the Semester
As you progress through the semester, continue helping students establish good learning habits by engaging them in learning processes. Also, as it gets more difficult for you to keep up with grading and communications, be aware of your grading load and adjust as needed.
Make lectures interactive by adding active learning strategies
Active learning involves engaging students through activities or discussions that require active participation rather than passive learning. While you might feel pressured to focus on covering as much content as possible in every class period, it’s important to take time to help solidify students’ understandings through engagement with the content as well.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- How can you break up your lecture considering students’ attention span?
- How can you create opportunities for students to reflect on their learning?
- How can you create opportunities for students to learn from each other's knowledge and experiences?
- What concepts are better learned through direct instruction, and what can be better learned through small discussion, hands-on, or collaborative work?
- Divide longer lectures into self-contained chunks that can be sequenced together with reflection work or group activities to help students maintain attention.
- Designate time for students to talk to each other or in groups and report to the whole class. This will allow the students to check each other’s understanding or possibly do peer teaching. With a large course, a whole group lecture leaves many students only passively participating, creating space for only a few to talk at a time. Small group work allows more students to participate at a time.
- Have students in small groups work through case studies or other real-world applications of the concepts from the course
- Create spaces for students to reflect on the topics or their learning synchronously or asynchronously, like exit slips, discussions, surveys, etc.
Streamline Grading & Feedback
You may feel overwhelmed by the amount of grading you have to do. It’s good to review your assessment practices to ensure they meet students’ needs and show their growth while still honoring your time and labor.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- Are you sticking to your feedback commitments at the start of the semester? If not, why? Can you articulate that to your students and make a new plan for moving forward?
- Do assessments show student learning and growth in the course? What areas are students still struggling with, and how can you address those struggles?
- If working with TA graders, are all graders consistent in grading across all students?
- Streamline grading by using the Comment Library on Canvas, which will allow you to send common comments you have written to more than one student when themes emerge in their work.
- If you’re changing your feedback commitment, communicate clearly to the students what changes you’re making on feedback and why.
- It’s a good practice to give more feedback early in the semester so your students would know how to do the assignments or establish good habits. Once they have good routines, you may be able to reduce the amount of feedback.
- Meet with your TAs to ensure a consistent approach before grading major assignments. Try grading together on a few assignment submissions for consistent grading.
- Reach out to students who are struggling to offer additional support. Using the Canvas “message students who” feature will allow you to quickly identify and reach out to students who are missing work or receiving a particular grade.
Check-in & Pivot as Necessary
Even with the best-laid plans, things change. As you learn more about your students, continue to reassess what is and is not working and adjust accordingly.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- What patterns do you see in student behavior? What do these patterns tell you about how students feel about the course?
- Are you following through with your commitments at the beginning of the semester?
- Have there been any disruptions to your schedule, such as weather or illness? How are you going to communicate the necessary changes to your schedule?
- Conduct a midterm survey to check in on student well-being and learning now that you are more settled into class routines.
- Have low-stakes or zero-point opportunities for students to share feedback on the course. Implement what feedback you can and articulate to them what feedback you cannot address.
- Be transparent in your communication about any changes you’re making to the course and your rationale for making those changes.
- Be very careful about deadline changes as they may affect students’ plans and schedules with other classes, work, and co-curricular activities.
- Remember that if you’re pushing back a deadline, the Success Week policy prohibits major assignments from being due the week before finals week.
- Rather than moving deadlines, consider ways that assignments could be altered to reduce what is required or how much content is covered by that assignment. For example, rather than pushing back an exam to a later week, reduce the content that is covered on that exam to match what you've been able to get through in class.
- Share campus resources with students that may help with their learning outside of the classroom, like tutoring at Visor Center, resources through Milner Library, and Redbird Well.
Ending the Semester
For many students, the last weeks of class can be the most stressful as they try to navigate finals across multiple courses. Ensure your students end the semester successfully by being proactive with grading and communication. Once the course is over, make time to reflect and assess what did and didn't work during the semester.
Final Grading & Last week
Ensure that students know where and when to find information on their final grade.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- Is your grade accurate and complete?
- What kind of feedback do students want or need on their final assessments? Do the students review your feedback?
- How can you make yourself available to students during the last few weeks of classes, particularly as this is a higher-stress time as they wrap up their final assessments?
- Spot-check your grade book to ensure you have scored all assessments. Encourage students to do the same and let you know immediately if there are any errors.
- Create sign-up appointments for students who have questions on content or their course grades. These appointments are optional, but let students know you can support them.
- Use the Comment Library on Canvas to provide quick feedback on assessments.
- Send out an announcement during finals week with resources for student support and remind them that you are still available during the last weeks of the semester to help them succeed in the course.
Plan for Future Semesters
There is always room for improvement. At the end of the semester, while the course is still fresh in your mind, examine what worked well in your course and what didn't to consider how you can improve learning for future semesters.
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Considerations
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Strategies
- What patterns do you see in student behavior? What do these patterns tell you about how students feel about the course?
- Re-evaluate lessons you felt were not as successful to document why and make changes for future courses.
- Evaluate how students did each assessment. Consider where the students might be confused or have misunderstood content. Based on this evaluation, you may want to change questions in quizzes, assignment instructions, or learning activities. Document what changes you plan to make and how those changes will maximize student learning in future courses.
References
Lynch, R. P., and Pappas, E. (2017). A Model for Teaching Large Classes: Facilitating a" Small Class Feel". International Journal of Higher Education, 6(2), 199-212.
Mulryan-Kyne, C. (2010). Teaching large classes at college and university level: Challenges and opportunities. Teaching in Higher Education, 15(2), 175-185.
Lawrence, J. E. (2022). Teaching large classes in higher education: challenges and strategies. The Educational Review, 6(6), 251-262.
Cash, C. B., Letargo, J., Graether, S. P., and Jacobs, S. R. (2017). An analysis of the perceptions and resources of large university classes. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(2), ar33.
Lloyd-Strovas, J. (2015). Tips for teaching large classes. Retrieved from https://www.learningenvironments.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/documents/4.%20Tips%20For%20Teaching%20Large%20Classes.pdf.
Cavazos, J. T., Riggenbach, M. R., and Brewer, K. (2021). Making large classes feel small: An examination of student interactions with undergraduate teaching assistants. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 7(4), 263- 277.
Websites
Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching - Making Large Classes Feel Smaller