Transforming a large lecture class into a more personal, engaging experience doesn’t have to involve high-tech gadgets and a team of production assistants. Plenty of other strategies work. Here are a few of the approaches that have gained traction.
Flipped Class
Instructors seem to either love or loathe this approach, which reverses traditional teaching by giving students recorded lectures and lessons to access in the dorm or at home and using class time for hands-on assignments or projects.
Many students like being able to stop, start, and rewind a recorded lecture until they understand it. In class, students learn from one another while the instructor circulates through the classroom, acting as a facilitator or coach.
In order for this to go smoothly, students have to prepare extensively before they come to class. Faculty members who have struggled with the approach say that doesn’t always happen, and some have responded by giving graded daily quizzes.
Variations of the flipped class abound. Many instructors flip only a portion of the class, or a few sessions a month. The most successful often take place in classrooms that have been redesigned to create collaborative work spaces.
Scale-Up
One of the most ambitious efforts is the Scale-Up approach, which is being used at more than 250 campuses, according to Robert J. Beichner, the professor of physics at North Carolina State University who is perhaps its biggest champion.
How to make big classes feel small
Nine students sit at a round table in three groups of three, each with a laptop and whiteboard. The instructor gives them something interesting to investigate, and while they tackle the challenge, the instructor and assistant roam around the classroom, asking questions and sending teams to help one another. Depending on the enrollment, a classroom might have a dozen of these tables.
The acronym stands for Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s version, known as Technology Enabled Active Learning, intersperses 20-minute lectures in physics with discussion questions, animations, and pencil-and-paper exercises.
Small-Group Exercises
A more traditional lecture class can still be split up intermittently into groups so that lectures are delivered in 15-minute bursts rather than 50-minute orations.
Professors might check in with students from time to time using hand-held classroom response devices, or clickers. When the answers (or silence) indicate the students are confused, the professor might ask them to brainstorm with someone sitting nearby.
Some faculty members create working groups at the start of the semester, aiming for a diverse mix of class years, majors, and demographics. The same groups meet throughout the year, so members are encouraged to sit near one another.
Other faculty members rely on ad hoc groups that change each class. Students are often graded on group assignments, which creates peer pressure for them to come to class prepared.
Collaborative learning works much better when seats swivel and desks aren’t fixed. On a growing number of campuses, classrooms are being built with this in mind. Existing ones are being reconfigured to eliminate the long desks and bolted-down chairs that are typical of lecture halls.
Undergraduate Assistants
Group work requires more assistants to roam the classroom and help keep discussions on track. There usually aren’t enough graduate students to go around, so universities are hiring undergraduate students who have done well in a class to help out for class credit or pay.
Having more teaching and learning assistants allows instructors to offer frequent short quizzes and writing assignments. This lets them engage students more deeply and assess them more regularly.
A 400-seat chemistry class at the University of Texas at Austin relies on a dozen undergraduate and graduate TAs circulating through the room to help students during group work. The instructor has developed a “peer learning assistants” course to train undergraduate chemistry majors to serve as learning coaches in large classes that use active learning. The goal is to give a small-seminar feel to a class that could seem large and impersonal.
The Personal Touch
Even when it’s impossible in a class of 300 to remember students’ names, professors can personalize their lectures by referring to details that show they’re interested in their students as individuals. Faculty members sometimes start by asking students to fill out a card listing personal tidbits like favorite songs, hobbies, or hometowns.
One professor asked students what songs they listened to when they were stressed; he then played a couple of selections before a test by a class favorite — Ed Sheeran, the English singer-songwriter. Another professor makes a point of asking students their names when she calls on them and then refers to them by name in her response.
And one asks two students to help him take notes when a guest lecturer is speaking. He then combines the three sets of notes to give to the class and takes the two student note-takers to lunch.
Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.