Welcome to Teaching, a newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education. This week, Beckie passes along readers’ insights on classes that are too big — or, in one case, too small. Stay tuned for news on open textbooks, new books on teaching, and a rundown of forthcoming conferences.
Pros and Cons of Small Classes
Last week, I wrote a story that raised questions about whether small classes are necessarily best, and wrestled with just how small “small classes” must be. I’ve received a number of interesting responses from readers, some of whom agreed to let me share their thoughts with you.
John Richard Schrock, an emeritus professor of biology at Emporia State University, shared one benefit of the small classes that he taught to aspiring biology teachers. “Research from the 1950s onward has shown the value of pupil eye dilation, etc. in determining whether a listener understands,” Schrock wrote. “A teacher can ’read’ eyes back about five seats in a normal classroom, about seven in a steep British theatre classroom.”
That, he explained, allows instructors to engage with students who are confused, offering them more examples. As a result, Schrock argued, colleges that put students in large lecture halls are committing “institutionally mandated teaching malpractice.”
Jeffrey H. Karlin, a professor in the school of taxation at Golden Gate University, seldom has more than 20 students in a class. “That’s really great,” he wrote. “But a class with too few students is hard to teach.” Once enrollment dips below seven, “some students are uncomfortable that they are expected to maintain eye contact, remain engaged, and communicate in each class.” Karlin’s students are in master’s programs in tax or accounting, and they usually work full time during the day. That, he adds, makes it challenging to stay engaged during the whole class period.
Don Fader, an associate professor of musicology at the University of Alabama, wrote that neither large or small classes are intrinsically good or bad, but rather serve different purposes. Large lectures, he wrote, are good for disseminating information, while “a small seminar is really designed for the thinking and discussion aspect.”
Those purposes need not be mutually exclusive, he added. As an undergraduate at Reed College, Fader took Humanities 110, which combined the two approaches, “so we had the combination of ‘shared experience’ in lectures and individual discussion in seminars.” That course “remains one of my most cherished foundational educational experiences.”
Is there a course you took as an undergrad that has stuck with you? How did it affect the way you teach? Tell me about it at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com, and it may appear in a future newsletter.
