Welcome to Teaching, a weekly newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education. This week’s issue was put together by Beckie. We’ll begin with your — sometimes strong! — reactions to the story of a professor managing a 600-person class. Stay tuned for some tips on course design and a super-quick reader survey. Let’s dive in:
Teaching a Crowd
Beth’s description of watching a professor trying — with mixed success — to engage students in a large lecture class in last week’s newsletter elicited some strong responses from readers. “Why do we have a class of 600 in the first place?,” wrote Autar Kaw. “Just teach it online and call it a day.” Kaw, a professor of mechanical engineering at University of South Florida, was not alone in this view.
“Trying techniques like pop-up quizzes misses the point,” wrote Dom Caristi, a professor of telecommunications at Ball State University. “Why force those students to physically meet when another format would work as well — or better?”
Not all readers, however, thought that the large lecture was beyond redemption. Gihan Mohamad, an achievement coach and library media specialist at Bergenfield High School, in New Jersey, suggested that the professor could boost engagement by asking higher-order questions that begin with “how” or “why.” “If his students were able to demonstrate understanding in answering these questions while watching Grey’s Anatomy,” Mohamad wrote, “I’ll let them be!”
Bill Caraher, an associate professor of history at the University of North Dakota, described an approach to teaching introductory history, “which tends to be one of the most dreaded ‘sage on the stage’-style lecture classes.” Caraher has students work in nine-person teams to write their own textbook. “Not only does this communicate the idea that they make and write their own history (and their own past),” he writes, it “also pushes back against the rising textbook prices.”
Readers who want to explore the topic further — and there seem to be a lot of you — may be interested in this article, shared by one of its authors, Eric Pappas, a professor in the department of integrated science and technology at James Madison University. This story from The Chronicle’s Katherine Mangan provides a nice exploration of personalizing the lecture, too.
Thanks to everyone who wrote in on this hot topic. Reading your responses is one of the best parts of producing the newsletter. Speaking of responses, we hope you’ll participate in a short survey. Read on to learn more ...
