For Every Class How Many Students Are There at Art Center College of Design

Teaching Large Classes

Cite this guide: Wilsman, A. (2013). Educational activity Large Classes. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/educational activity-big-classes/.

Teaching a large grade poses many challenges, both in and out of the classroom. In the classroom, large enrollments tin can promote pupil disengagement and feelings of alienation, which tin erode students' sense of responsibility and lead to behaviors that both reflect and promote lack of engagement.  Logistics can also be a challenge when pedagogy a large form. How does one all-time manage the daily assistants of what tin can often experience similar a small-scale city?

Here, we present strategies to aid instructors bargain with some of the challenges associated with teaching large classes:

Promoting Student Engagement

Promoting Student Engagement

What causes students to non participate?

While encouraging class participation tin be challenging in whatever form, it tin exist especially difficult for instructors of big classes. To effectively evoke participation in such teaching contexts, information technology is helpful to sympathize the factors that discourage involvement. In the article, "Putting the Participation Puzzle Together," Dr. Maryellen Weimer attempts to uncover precisely what motivates students to be active participants in the classroom.  Weimer does this by analyzing a recent study that tests common hypotheses about the nature of student participation. The report found that while a multitude of issues impact student participation levels, a few emerge every bit particularly of import. First, students' perception of faculty potency can make a substantial difference in determining whether or non students participate. 2nd, students' perceptions of the instructor, developed through interactions outside of the course, have a large bear on on student participation. Finally, student fears of peer judgment explicate why many students choose non to participate.

Kinesthesia Authorisation: Combatting perceptions of the instructor equally fount of knowledge

The issue of faculty authority requires particular attention. In our frequently freshmen-heavy large classes, many students experience that the instructor is the czar of knowledge. To these students, the ideas and arguments of the instructor are not meant to be challenged. Certainly, students like this are more likely to sit down silently in class and take it all in.  If, as instructors, we hope to avert this, we must make certain that our courses are content-centered, not teacher-centered. How does one do this? We tin can model the kind of questioning inherent in our disciplines and ask students to practice those questioning skills through exercises, in-class and out. We tin can also be careful to underscore the degree to which knowledge in our fields is contested and constantly evolving.

To allow students to do the skills they should develop, it can be helpful to break up the form into 10-twenty minute segments, incorporating a specific question or practise that requires student participation in each segment. The question or do can take several forms.

Think-pair-share – In this elementary practice, the teacher poses a question or problem to the class. Later giving students time to consider their response (think), the students are asked to partner with some other student to talk over their responses (pair). Pairs of students can then be asked to report their conclusions and reasoning to the larger group, which tin can exist used as a starting point to promote word in the class as a whole (Angelo and Cross, 1993). This exercise helps promote appointment because students feel greater responsibleness for participation when paired with ane other student; lack of participation becomes obvious and problematic. In improver, the inclusion of "think" time and the initial opportunity to talk nearly a response with a unmarried peer reduces the feet some students feel about responding to teacher prompts.

Minute paper – This classroom assessment technique (Classroom Assessment Technique Teaching Guide) can also exist used to promote student engagement (Angelo and Cross, 1993). At the end of a class segment, students are asked to spend 1 to three minutes writing the chief betoken of the class to that point also as questions that remain. These papers tin can serve multiple purposes: they can exist used past the instructor as a formative assessment technique; they serve every bit a tool to promote metacognition, asking students to consider what they practice and don't understand; they can be used as the footing for small or large group discussion. Equally with the think-pair-share technique, the infinitesimal paper gives students time to compose and articulate their thoughts, increasing their comfort with asking questions or entering discussion.

Muddiest signal paper – This modified version of the minute paper asks students to clear the point that is nigh unclear to them at a given point (Angelo and Cantankerous, 1993). It serves the aforementioned functions as has the same potential uses described for the infinitesimal paper.

Clicker questions – Questions that tin can be presented as multiple choice questions are particularly amenable to use with "clickers," or classroom response systems. All students in the class are asked to cull a response to the question, and the results tin be displayed in existent time. If the instructor wishes, educatee responses can be tracked, either to serve as an attendance measure or equally a formative cess tool. This approach has the benefit of broad student participation in the mental work of answering the question. In add-on, clicker questions tin can be used to foster discussion very effectively (Crouch and Mazur, 2001); if a significant fraction of the class answers incorrectly, then student groups can be asked to discuss before re-voting.

When planning these questions or activities, keep in mind that large classes present advantages equally well as special challenges. In these large classes, retrieve of students as a diverse human resource to be drawn upon in pursuit of our learning goals. To help ensure that the students serve as this resources, it is vital that we fix the right tone from the beginning. Make it articulate during the offset weeks of class that we expect students to question us and interact during class, and introduce questions or exercises that make that interaction both expected and safe.

These approaches are particularly effective when they take advantage of the opportunity for modest-grouping work. Studies suggest that pocket-sized-group activities promote student mastery of textile, enhance critical thinking skills, provide rapid feedback for the teacher, and facilitate the development of affective dimensions in students, such as students' sense of self-efficacy and learner empowerment (Cooper and Robinson, 2001).[1] Assigning grouping members roles (like facilitator, recorder, divergent thinker, etc.) or distributing a grouping cess rubric can go on groups relatively counterbalanced and fair and help ensure participation by all group members.

Teacher demeanor

Educatee perceptions of the teacher tin can be peculiarly challenging to bargain with given that in big classes, it is more than hard to take meaningful exchanges with each and every educatee. However, at that place is much that we can do to projection a demeanor that promotes student participation.

Make it a priority to larn and utilise student names. Some instructors utilize "equity cards", which are generated from students' pictures (from the form roll). Instructors call on people at random from the card pile. This ensures that the instructor uses students' names, helps ensure a broad base of participation, makes students less likely to disengage during class, and tin can exist a helpful tool in learning students' names. Other instructors accomplish the same goals by gathering student ID cards at the beginning of class and choosing students at random to answer questions.

Establish a rapport. At the beginning of each semester, Andy Van Schaack of the HOD section at Vanderbilt asks students to make full out annotation cards describing some of their interests.  By looking over these annotation cards and memorizing pupil names, Dr. Van Schaack gets to know his students and tries to greet them by proper name and speak with them as they enter the classroom.  Such efforts frequently result in a better rapport between professor and student, and as a consequence, a more engaged classroom.

Be patient and affirmative with students in form and out. These behaviors can bolster student confidence, and more confident students are much more than likely to participate in form. Many students will shut down in a course when they perceive an instructor as harsh. In such cases, the fear of instructor disapproval becomes more pronounced.

Develop strategies to encourage students to use office hours. Dr. Andy Van Schaack requires students to meet with him in groups of 4 during the commencement few weeks of the semester. He finds that the brief social interaction (by and large, almost v minutes per pupil) helps him think students' names and makes the students more comfy with him and a small group of their colleagues.

Peer judgment

Fear of peer judgment is a disincentive for many students, especially in large classes where students fear being embarrassed in front end of dozens or even hundreds of their peers. To best deal with student fears of peer judgment, information technology's disquisitional that instructors promote an environment of trust and mutual respect from the very beginning of a course. In such an environment, students are more probable to feel condom to actively participate in form. Endeavour to foster a sense of personal connection between students and instructors through group and partner activities that help students get better acquainted. The resulting feelings of cohesiveness are especially valuable because students who feel that connectedness are far less likely to get against their classroom community's norms. Finally, be certain to residual student voices past non allowing any students to boss discussions and by protecting students from interruption.

All of the approaches described higher up allow students the opportunity to engage with class questions and challenges anonymously or in small groups instead of or prior to large grade discussion. These tools can therefore reduce student fears and thereby promote participation. In addition, online discussion boards can provide structured opportunities for students who are otherwise as well shy to participate in class discussion.

Handling Student Grades

Handling Student Grades

Grading in Large Courses:
Common Issues

Large courses come up with grading bug familiar to instructors across a range of disciplines. On the one hand, we don't want to accept then many graded assignments that nosotros bog ourselves downward with incessant grading. On the other, we do desire to take enough assessments that we have a fair grading system for our students and ourselves. Is in that location a style to strike a balance betwixt these two things without relying entirely upon multiple choice exercises? Absolutely.

Rethinking Formative Assessments

There are several ways to contain more formative assessments into our form that do not add significantly to our workload, merely give students and instructors the critical feedback that they demand. Discussion-oriented activities in the classroom enable students to practice course-related skills and demonstrate comprehension of the fabric, while not requiring formal grading. For these kinds of activities, students can receive valuable verbal (and sometimes written) feedback from professors, TAs, and other students. The incorporation of polling technologies similar "clickers" or Top Lid tin can also serve to engage students while giving students a sense of how they're doing in the course, and giving instructors an opportunity to assess student-learning.  These types of feedback-providing activities are especially valuable in classes in which the first graded assignments are not returned to students for several weeks.

The Value of Group Projects and Papers

What of summative assessments? We will need to grade some homework, papers, and exams, so how exercise we all-time grade 200 students? 1 option is to dissever students into groups.  In a class of 200, organizing our form into l groups of four students to work on weekly homework assignments or papers reduces our grading load by 75% while still giving students a chance to practice their skills and receive feedback. This substantial difference in workload may brand collecting homework assignments or boosted paper assignments feasible in these large classes. Such grouping work likewise has value in promoting the kinds of communication skills that represent critical learning goals in so many of our classrooms. However, group projects too heighten different challenges in cultivating fair and equitable groups that we will demand to address. To help promote agile contribution by all group members, there are a number of tactics that we can effort, such as

• Assigning each fellow member of the group a function in the group.
• Building a peer review chemical element into the grouping work so students feel accountable to one some other.
• Offering pocket-size bonuses on exams for those groups whose members all maintained a sure boilerplate, in guild to promote positive interdependence.

Light Grading on Short Assignments

Another way to build a steadier stream of graded feedback into our courses without making grading a full-time chore is to maintain a simple grading system for short assignments. For instance, we can grade papers on a three-to-five point scale, with specific pieces of data required for each point. A bank check/cheque-minus/bank check-plus system also makes our job as a grader quicker and easier while providing feedback to teacher and student alike. It's important to realize that we need not grade everything on a 100-indicate scale with copious comments.

The Value of Grading Rubrics

Finally, by utilizing a detailed grading rubric for papers and other assignments, we can streamline the grading process and reduce the need for extensive written comments. Rubrics tin likewise obviate problems of inconsistency when we're dealing with more than i TA grader. Effective rubrics can thus facilitate a faster grading system that is as well fairer for students.

Paper Comments

One of the virtually time-consuming aspects of grading in whatsoever classroom is providing comments on student papers.  How do nosotros provide worthwhile comments to students while protecting our time? There are a few means to arroyo this problem. Many professors use shorthand comments on papers and hand back papers with a guide to that shorthand. Indeed, often nosotros make the aforementioned comments over and once again on many papers. Rather than repeating those comments in total sentences, a shorthand annotate of maybe a word or acronym, keyed to a guide can salve considerable time for professors. That'southward not to say either that all comments should exist "cookie-cutter" in this mode, but using this technique for half of one's written comments can shave hours off the grading process. For more than data on such shorthand paper feedback, please see a recent Professor Didactics mail service, entitled, "A Mountain of Grading," which discusses a CFT workshop from August 21^st, 2012, "Effective and Efficient Grading," led by Assistant Managing director Nancy Chick, and Graduate Teaching Fellow Beth Koontz.

Robo-graded homework

Information technology tin can also be valuable to have advantage of automated online homework services. Some examples:

The publishing company Pearson offers Mastering Biology, an online, robo-graded homework and testing system that includes multiple choice questions that are coded to Bloom's taxonomy and normed to nationwide answers as well as ordering and sorting activities, several of which are associated with elaborate and informative animations. In add-on, the system includes Socratic questions and hints to help students think through processes they are misunderstanding every bit well as opportunities for multiple trials at difficult concepts. The company offers similar programs for a diverseness of disciplines, including

• Mastering A&P
• Mastering Astronomy
• Mastering Chemistry
• Mastering Engineering
• Mastering Genetics
• Mastering Geography
• Mastering Microbiology
• Mastering Physics

A serial of example studies on the utility of the system tin can exist found here.

Many science textbook publishers offer similar systems; instructors should consider these systems when choosing a textbook.

• Sapling Learning is a textbook-independent, interactive homework and assessment system that can be used in conjunction with classes in
  • General chemical science
  • Organic chemistry
  • Biochemistry
  • Analytical chemistry
  • Chemical engineering science
  • Introductory physics
  • Economics

ALEKS is a textbook-independent assessment and learning organisation that relies upon artificial intelligence techniques to assess students' understanding of key course concepts and track them to learning activities that help move their understanding forward. Built on the principle of hierarchical concept organization in chemistry and math, the system asks students diagnostic questions to locate their areas of mastery and then tailors subsequent steps to build on existing noesis.

This list, while far from exhaustive, is intended to suggest starting points for online tools that may better learning in large classes.

Conclusion

Ultimately, nosotros do not need to choose between superficial or minimal grading and a grading system that leaves united states and our TAs overwhelmed. With the correct strategies and techniques, nosotros can both give our students frequent feedback, graded and ungraded, while still maintaining some semblance of a social life. For more than data on grading, delight see our educational activity guide entitled, "Grading Student Work."

Working with Teaching Assistants

Working with Teaching Assistants

Some other common claiming for instructors pedagogy large classes is the management of graduate teaching assistants. These teaching assistants are often tasked with grading in large classes, but they come to that activity with vastly dissimilar conceptions of what effective grading looks like and how one can grade effectively in a reasonable amount of fourth dimension. Likewise, instruction assistants come to our classes with different teaching skill sets and life experiences.  Some of them are mature, effective teachers, while others are preparing to teach their first form.  In our large classes, these issues are oft amplified by the large number of TAs that nosotros may require.  How exercise we ensure that our TAs are all on the same folio and doing their jobs well?

Grading

Ane common undergraduate complaint in large classes is with regard to inconsistency in grading.  Well-nigh instructors will recognize the refrain, "My TA is an unfair grader! Tin I change sections?" Indeed, information technology can be frustrating for undergraduates who believe that they are the victim of the "tough grader," and are receiving worse grades than their friends despite handing in comparable work. Then how exercise we ensure consistency and mitigate undergraduate charges of unfairness?

Have regular grading meetings! The best way to promote grading consistency among our TAs is to come across as a grouping soon after collecting an exam or paper. If one is grading essays, identify and photocopy an exemplary essay, a few mediocre essays, and a poor essay and distribute these essays to each member of the group. Prior to the meeting, have each TA grade and comment upon these essays. At the meeting, get through each essay 1-by-i. Inquire each person what grade they gave to each essay and why.  Inquire them about the best and worst aspects of each piece of writing. Such a meeting provides a wonderful opportunity for our graders, specially our inexperienced graders, to think nearly how they're budgeted their grading. It can serve to calibrate expectations for the exam or paper. The coming together can also serve as a forum for the states to explicate our expectations for the exams or papers. Information technology is unfair to assume that our TAs volition simply know what we're looking for on whatsoever given test question or paper topic.

Use grading rubrics. A carefully designed grading rubric can both minimize the amount of time spent grading, an important consideration in big classes, and serve as a mutual standard for our TAs. We can even enlist TA support in constructing a grading rubric. Such an exercise can exist valuable to TAs because it facilitates the grading process, only it as well gives them an opportunity to play a major role in student assessment, a valuable experience for those TAs who hope to teach courses of their ain at some time to come time. It also gives us a new and unique perspective on class exams, papers, and assignments that may ultimately enrich the course.

Separate up grading sections. We tin better ensure consistency by assigning different grading sections to different TAs. This is more challenging with essays, simply is a common approach for exam-grading.  What this technique entails specifically depends on the makeup of our examination, but for example, perhaps i TA grades the short-answer section, a 2d TA grades the starting time essay, and a third TA grades the second essay.  While there however may be some inconsistency in the "harshness" of grading between sections, with this method, students tin can hardly argue that their particular grader is tougher: everyone's exam is graded by the same graders!

Handling Grade Complaints

In most classes, large or small, grade complaints are inevitable. However, the issue can go more pronounced when a couple of upset students becomes a dozen or more than. How tin nosotros best deal with grading complaints?

Have a formalized arrangement in place. Instructors of large classes approach course complaints in a variety of ways. Some insist that undergraduates come directly to them with their concerns. Others suggest that undergraduates speak to their TAs beginning earlier consulting the professor. Still others requite full authorization to their TAs to handle all grade complaints. The important thing is that we accept a formalized organization, preferably outlined in our syllabus. Students should know what is expected of them, and what their options are if they feel that they accept been graded unfairly. Tell students upfront what the protocol will be.

Require complaints to exist written out and submitted. One common technique to avoid frivolous grade complaints is requiring a written explanation of the complaint at an early on phase in our protocol. Oftentimes, upon starting this piece of writing, undergraduates with a visceral reaction to a bad grade will come across that the grade was deserved. By requiring this slice of writing, we're as well forcing students to face the written comments on their exam or paper. Sometimes, students but run into the bad mark and seek out the teacher, rather than reading and mulling over grader comments.

Institute a 24-60 minutes rule. Another way to ensure that students are carefully considering the class and comments and aren't simply going with a visceral reaction is to accept a 24-hour rule. What that means is that students are required to take 24-hours earlier contacting the TA or professor with a grade complaint.  This 24-60 minutes flow often serves as a "cooling off" menses in which students tin can read and call back almost grader comments.

Managing TAs Who Lead Discussions, Lab Sessions, and Review Sessions

Know Your TAs. Just as with grading, TAs come up to give-and-take-leading with dissimilar levels of expertise.  Some volition be at home in the classroom. Others will be terrified to speak in front end of their students.  Information technology's a expert idea to go a estimate on this in the weeks preceding the semester and then that we tin can give our TAs the appropriate level of support. Some may be independent-minded and will desire considerable command over what happens in their classrooms, and others may require potent guidance. Thus, earlier we get to know our undergraduates, we ought to become to know our TAs.

Concur regular meetings. Should we have TAs that require a strong support arrangement or even if we don't and we want to maintain some control over discussions, lab sessions, and review sessions, regular weekly or bi-weekly meetings can be valuable. These meetings can serve many purposes. Nosotros can utilise this time to become over of import concepts and course content with our TAs who likely don't take our expertise.  We can as well use this time as a "check-in" period to go a sense of how the course is going for our TAs and undergraduates alike. Professor/TA meetings can also be a forum in which we provide TAs with handouts or discussion guides to assist facilitate their class time. Ultimately, how much control we want to exert over our discussion sections, lab sessions, or review sessions is up to u.s., but setting aside a time to see with our TAs is valuable considering it provides professor and TA alike with a support construction in which everyone can talk through issues relating to the class.

Dealing with Adulterous

Dealing with Cheating

Cheating is a mutual problem in college courses big and small, but in large courses, it can exist especially difficult to identify cheating when it happens.  That's because we're grading such a high volume of exams, essays, and assignments that the kind of careful assay often necessary to identify cheaters is more difficult.  We might non know our students and their work as well, and information technology's that noesis that typically helps college instructors identify cheating when information technology is going on.  As anyone who has proctored an exam for 100+ students can attest, it tin can be very difficult to keep upwards with everything that's going on in our small city-sized courses.  Then what can we practise?

Be upfront with our expectations. Having been to graduate school, the average college teacher is well-versed in what "plagiarism" entails.  Even so, not a year goes by without a professor at a major American university being accused of plagiarism. Certainly, sometimes information technology's deliberate. Oftentimes it's not.  That's considering what constitutes things like "plagiarism" and "cheating" is not e'er clear to many of higher educational activity's professional academics.

Given that fact, the students in our ofttimes freshmen-heavy big courses are even less articulate on what we mean when we speak of these concepts. Sure, our students may have read the Vanderbilt Honor Code at some point in the afar by, merely while they are probable familiar with black and white scenarios (copying answers off of their neighbor's examination is cheating), do they know what constitutes an honor lawmaking violation in those grey and murky scenarios that sometimes face them?

• What are our expectations for "open volume" exams?
• If students are allowed to piece of work on homework assignments in pairs or groups, are they allowed to mitt in comparable or identical assignments?
• How do nosotros want students to cite sources in their papers?  Is a works cited page required?

Equally the instructor, we need to anticipate such questions.  Upon handing out a paper or homework assignment, we ought to have a conversation with students about our expectations. Ideally, we should put those expectations in writing on the syllabus or handout sail, so that students have something to which they tin frequently refer.  Putting those expectations in writing also helps should we ever demand to charge a pupil with an Honor Code violation to the Award Council.  Some instructors even choose to dedicate early form time to giving their students a tutorial on adulterous and plagiarism.

Dealing with adulterous on exams

Trying to take hold of an private or a minor grouping of cheaters in an test of 100+ students can be a difficult chore, but there'southward a lot that nosotros tin practise to make adulterous more hard.

Proctoring effectively. Proctoring tin seem basic: watch the students as they take the examination and brand sure they're not chatting or looking at ane another'due south tests.  Still, there are some aspects to proctoring that are hands overlooked.  For example, it can exist difficult to observe students when they are wearing a hat that covers their eyes, then many professors require that students either remove their hats, or put their hats on backwards.  Some other oft disregarded feature of proctoring is the need for at least ii proctors.  Part of the proctor's role is often to field educatee questions regarding the exam, but while the instructor is answering that question, who is observing the students?

Randomize the blue books. In many of our big classes, students use blue books for exams.  Students are typically asked to bring these blue books with them to grade on exam 24-hour interval, especially in large classes where the instructor would accept to pay a considerable amount of money to provide all students with exam booklets.  Some students see this every bit an piece of cake mode to cheat: write answers in the blue book and refer to those answers throughout the test period.  Of course, there is an easy mode around this problem. Ask students to manus in their blueish books equally they walk in the classroom. Shuffle the blue books, so re-distribute them to students randomly.

Randomize the exams. Perhaps the most traditional way to cheat on an exam is for a student to copy off of his or her neighbor. The easiest fashion to avoid this is to hand out different versions of the exam. Some professors hand these exams out on different colour sheets of paper to further confuse a student who might like to re-create his or her neighbor's exam.

Randomize the seating. In our teeming large classes, it isn't always possible to leave spaces in-between each exam-taker.  We can, however, shake up the seating system. For case, 1 mutual technique is to require students seated in the back few rows to switch with those students seated in the forepart few rows. This can prove logistically challenging with a large class and a limited amount of time, but if we take a couple of minutes to shake the students up, information technology can practice a lot to prevent test takers from adulterous.

Switch upwardly our exams each semester. Designing tests can exist a fourth dimension-consuming affair. For that reason, some instructors use the aforementioned examination questions year after year. While this is tempting, it is not appropriate if we hope to preclude cheating. Some fraternity and sorority houses, in particular, keep files of by exams for a variety of courses. Change exam questions upwardly each semester to prevent some students from having an unfair reward.

Dealing with cheating on papers

Identifying cheating on papers often requires knowledge of a student'due south writing abilities.  It's frequently when students who really struggle with writing paw in flawless masterpieces that instructors are tipped off to a student's dishonest tactics. In large classes, we may not accept equally skilful of a sense of our students and their writing, and then what tin nosotros do to stop plagiarism?

Provide students with articulate instructions. Many of our students are inexperienced when it comes to citing sources.  How do we desire them to cite their sources? How thoroughly? Will parenthetical citations suffice?  What commendation fashion is preferable? Do we crave a bibliography or works cited page? Answer these questions in a handout or in the syllabus.

Employ Turnitin.Brightspace allows users to choose whether or not to run student assignments through "Turnitin," a program that checks for plagiarism, generates feedback for students on revision strategies, and serves every bit an online platform for instructors to provide electronic feedback to students. To utilize Turnitin, instructors must select the option to "enable Turnitin" for each private consignment that they would similar to run through Turnitin. Larn how.

Then we caught a student cheating.  At present what?

There are a number of means that we tin arroyo an Honor Code violation.

Take the issue to the honor council. Only visit the Vanderbilt Award Council's page (Vanderbilt Honor Council) and click "Report a Violation." There are many advantages to this choice. The Vanderbilt Laurels Quango has vast feel dealing with violations and handing the result over to them takes what can exist a substantial weight off our shoulders.

Meet with the student. Once one turns the issue over to the Honor Quango, i should non discuss the incident with the student. Before ane goes to the Honour Council, withal, meeting with the student and asking them about what happened can be valuable. Students ofttimes appreciate the opportunity to discuss the declared violation and such a meeting provides the teacher with an opportunity to access the veracity of the pupil's claims. Sometimes the event is but a miscommunication or misunderstanding.  If that's the case, it'due south better to avoid triggering the Laurels Quango procedure, which is ofttimes long and involved for the student.

Ask the student to re-practice the exam, paper, or assignment. It is within our rights as the instructor to ask students to re-practise an assignment if the violation is minor. It is, yet, strongly discouraged to merely give the student a nothing on the exam, paper, or assignment. The student may file a complaint against us if they're denied any kind of due process in an accusation of adulterous.

For more than information on dealing with adulterous, please consult our pedagogy guide entitled, "Cheating & Plagiarism."

Managing Logistical Issues

Managing Logistical Bug

Our large courses come with an array of logistical problems that tin can turn into a nightmare if we are not prepared to handle them. How do we prevent our email boxes from inundation with educatee e-mails the 24 hours earlier an test? How practice nosotros manage that line that sometimes develops effectually the building during our function hours?

Taking Course Attendance

While many instructors do non have class attendance in their large classes, some do.  But how tin 1 best take attendance in a form of 200 students?  Certainly, many instructors rely upon a attendance sheet that is passed effectually the room, simply this is oft a headache with the sheet being lost or students signing in for i another.  Many instructors take attendance through the employ of clickers. Brief in-class assignments or quizzes can also be valuable in taking attendance.  One can require that students answer a grade day-related prompt on a notecard at the end of class, sign it, and manus it in before leaving.  This notecard tin be graded or non.  Another way to ensure that class omnipresence remains loftier is by giving pop quizzes periodically.

Managing Student Eastward-mail service

When we teach a seminar class, nosotros tin can await a small percentage of students to email us regarding the coming exam the 24-hours preceding it. When we take 100+ students, however, that same small percentage tin overwhelm our e-postal service box. What can we practise?

Be upfront about how often we volition cheque and respond student due east-mails. Our undergraduate students have grown upwards in an age of e-mail in which many of them wait immediate responses to their east-mailed questions, big or pocket-size. This, however, is an unreasonable expectation for those of u.s.a. not attached to our smart phones, and even for some of usa who are, and students need to exist made enlightened of this early in the semester. Many instructors talk over their rules for email in their syllabus. For case, "I will read and respond to student e-mails once per day, each morn" or "Please give me 24 hours to answer to each email." Such rules can help avoid rapid-fire e-mails from students, many of which may ask why it's taking then long for us to reply to their question. Students will also be more inclined to think ahead with their questions and concerns: the professor will not get dorsum to students immediately merely considering they waited until the concluding infinitesimal on a given consignment.

Consider placing limits on student e-mails. Some instructors give students a line or word limit for their eastward-mails.  Some advise that students keep emails to four lines or less, while others accept more stringent requirements. Andrew Van Schaack, Banana Professor of the Practise in Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt, limits the trunk of student emails to 140 characters, the length of a Tweet. Such rules help ensure that educatee e-mail is clear and concise.

Plant rules about the kinds of questions we will respond to via email. Some questions lend themselves to quick e-mailed responses, others don't. It may be valuable to tell students what kinds of questions we will reply via e-mail and which are better left for office hours or in-class Q&As.

Avoid the pre-examination e-mail service drench. The 24 hours prior to an exam is often a fourth dimension when panicked e-mails flood into teacher inboxes. Likewise, the 24 hours prior to a paper due date is as well a busy time, as students often scramble for extensions. Again, clarity with expectations is of import. I ought to notify students when one will stop responding to east-mails regarding the exam, whether it's 24 hours, 12 hours, or ii hours in accelerate, and how long one requires to provide feedback on a rough typhoon of a paper. Clear and consequent rules tin can exist helpful and may encourage students to call back ahead.

Managing Function Hours

Create an role hour sign-upwardly sheet. Being an teacher of a big class sometimes means managing dozens of eager function hour visitors each week. Withal, having students manufactory around exterior our office during our role hours isn't only a nuisance for our office neighbors, it's not a valuable employ of our students' time. Consider implementing a formal scheduling organisation for our role hours, perhaps one publicly bachelor to our students such equally Scheduly, so they know when they ought to plan their visit.

Encourage students to utilize their TAs. TAs are capable of handling many educatee problems, and there are some issues for which our TAs are actually ameliorate suited than instructors (for example, for discussion section questions or lab questions). Brand certain that our TAs are bachelor for office hours and encourage students to visit TAs with their bug, particularly when we are unavailable or otherwise too busy.

Lay some ground rules. Sometimes, in the days preceding an exam, in particular, students volition visit our function hours expecting to concur an hour-long i-on-one report session. This could certainly be valuable for the student, but can nosotros manage such a session given the fourth dimension constraints that come with being an teacher of a large class? If the answer is no, nosotros may want to organize a dedicated review session or simply tell students in advance that we cannot exist their "study buddy." Other times students may come past to chat. While at that place is value in cultivating cordial relationships with our students, if this is not something that we tin bide in our schedule, instruct students to only drop past function hours if they have specific questions.

Re-conceptualize our office hours. Office hours tend to be one-on-i meetings with students. However, there are some situations in which meeting with students in a group can be but as effective and a time-saver as well. Practise three students want to see with u.s. regarding the makeup of the exam? Assure that they're comfortable meeting equally a group, and then schedule them together.

Consider holding online part hours. If our schedules brand fulfilling our weekly office hours difficult, or if we are interested in belongings extra role hours in a given week, we can always agree remote part hours.  If we are interested in conducting role hours online, Brightspace provides a machinery to do so. The virtual classroom characteristic lets you live-circulate and collaborate with students online.

Integrating Technology

Integrating Applied science

Brightspace – There's a great deal that we can do with Brightspace to organize and maintain our large classes, and fifty-fifty advance our learning goals. Certainly, we can use the service to distribute course content like readings and syllabi. Nosotros can utilise the grade center to keep rails of student grades. We can also apply Brightspace to carry office hours online through it's virtual classroom function, as discussed in the "Managing Logistical Issues" section of this guide.

Withal, one of the most useful features of Brightspace is also amongst the least utilized: the discussion lath feature. Integrating an online discussion board into the classroom experience is a bully way to provide structured opportunities for our quieter students to participate in the course. While this is a valuable tool in small courses, it's particularly valuable in large courses because so many students might take wonderful things to contribute, yet receive insufficiently fewer opportunities to practice so as 1 of many students.  Consider posing online word questions before lessons to become students thinking almost the textile earlier grade, or request students to reply to word questions afterward course to demonstrate their synthesis of the material.

Twitter – Many university professors have utilized Twitter in their classrooms to great upshot.  Peradventure the nearly well-known example of this is Dr. Monica Rankin'south "Twitter Experiment" in her introductory history class at UT Dallas.  In this course, Rankin lectures on Mon and Wednesday, and organizes a pocket-size group discussion on Friday in which Twitter is used every bit a backchannel where students share questions and ideas between groups.  You can find an excellent five-minute video on Dr. Rankin's "Twitter Experiment" here: The Twitter Experiment – Twitter in the Classroom.  For a brief, disquisitional discussion of Dr. Rankin'south use of twitter, you tin detect a good commodity on CFT Director Derek Bruff'due south "Agile Learning" blog hither: Backchannel via Twitter.

Clickers – As discussed in the "Promoting Student Engagement" department, classroom response systems or "clickers" are a not bad way to become students involved in classroom discussions. One popular technique is to pose a question, ask students to consult their classroom neighbour, ask them to submit their answer as a pair, and and so ask some students to share out their responses.

Clickers piece of work for a multitude of reasons. Clicker responses are bearding, and so they embolden students to participate. Even if students, upon seeing the results, notice that their answer is not the nigh popular, by seeing that others got the same question wrong, it is often easier for students to effort to defend and explicate their wrong answer: a starting point for some valuable educational activity moments. Clickers are also a great style to go anybody involved in the grade and non just the students who are willing to speak out loud.  Finally, clickers are fun!  For some ideas on how to best integrate clickers into our classrooms, ane resource is this quick and easy guide, written by Vanderbilt Academy CFT Director, Derek Bruff, "Multiple-Choice Questions We Wouldn't Put on a Test: Promoting Deep Learning Using Clickers." For additional data, please see our educational activity guide entitled "Classroom Response Systems."

Top Lid – Clickers tin be a wonderful classroom resource, but they're not without their bug. The biggest problem for many is that they're not free, and they're not even cheap. Top Hat is a "bring your own device" (BYOD) classroom response organisation that makes use of students' personal mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops) as response devices. BYOD systems offer a number of logistical and pedagogical advantages over traditional, "clicker"-based systems.

Top Lid is the first classroom response system to be adopted campus-broad at Vanderbilt. It is available to faculty, students, and staff across campus at no toll. Instructors pedagogy with "clickers" are invited to consider Height Hat for in-class student polling.

VoiceThread.com – Another tool that can be used to promote learning in a large class is found at VoiceThread.com. With VoiceThread, we can post an image, document, or video online and accept our students comment on it. Students can add a video comment, audio comment, or a text comment to any nosotros or our students post. What results is frequently a rich, multimedia conversation between instructors and students. In her volume, Best Practices for Teaching with Emerging Technologies, Dr. Michelle Pacansky-Brock outlines how she regularly integrates VoiceThread into her Art History classes. For an example of how 1 might utilize VoiceThread, visit ane of Dr. Pacansky-Brock'south real VoiceThreads.

Online learning and cess tools —Several online homework/learning tools are described nether the Handling Student Grades tab above. In big courses, such interactive technologies tin can prove a critical resources for students who desire frequent feedback, but tin can't afford to visit instructor function hours each week.

Some Recommended Readings

• Carbone, Elisa Lynn. Educational activity Large Classes: Tools and Strategies.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, c1998.
• Cooper, James L. and Pamela Robinson.  "The Statement for Making Large Classes Seem Small." New Directions for Teaching and Learning 81 (2000): 5-sixteen.
• Heppner, Frank. Teaching the Large College Class: A Guidebook for Instructors with
• Renaud, Susan, Elizabeth Tannenbaum, and Phillip Stantial. "Pupil-Centered Teaching in Big Classes with Limited Resource." English language Teaching Forum Number iii (2007).
• Stanley, Christine A. and Yard. Erin Porter. Engaging Big Classes: Strategies and Techniques for College Faculty.  Boston: Anker Publishing Company, Inc., 2002.

References

Angelo TA and Cross KP (1993). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, 2^nd edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Cooper JL and Robinson P (2000). The Argument for Making Large Classes Seem Small-scale. New Directions for Teaching and Learning 81: 12.

Crouch CH and Mazur E (2001). Peer instruction: 10 years of feel and results. American Journal of Physics 69: 970-977.

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Source: https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/teaching-large-classes/

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