Large classes are unavoidable in higher education nowadays, especially after the massive expansion of higher education. A large class offers a learning space with greater student diversity so that students have more to learn from each other. Also, because of the large size, students could not depend on teachers' close guidance for learning any more. There is higher demand for them to develop the skills to take more responsibility for their own learning. However, in spite of the learning opportunities a large class may offer, what people talked the most are the challenges. The concerns most frequently mentioned about the large classes include the heavy workload in marking and feedback and the difficult in engaging students in active learning. I will focus on these two in this video. First, the challenges of engaging students. While small classes seem to offer more rooms for personal interactions among teachers and students, there is no solid research evidence saying class size does affect learning. In fact, engaging students can be challenging in the class of any size. The challenge a large size may bring to the engagement is usually the layout of the classroom and the logistics such as how to arrange the sharing of the knowledge among the students or how to obtain an overall picture of students' progress in learning. I guess what we can do is to 1) select the teaching and learning activities that do not have demand on the layout of the classroom and 2) make use of some teaching aids or technologies to facilitate the communication in a large class. Within this module, you can find some instructional strategies that have no demand on the classroom. For example, think-pair-share, students can always think independently, pair with someone next to them, and share their ideas with the whole class. You can find a video dedicated to this option in this module. Audience response system, another instructional example mentioned in this module, is very effective in checking students' understanding in a large class. It helps a teacher to customize one's teaching to students learning needs and provide timely feedback. It can be conducted either through high technology or with no technology at all. For details, you can watch that video. Although not all the large classes have to be lectures, many do. If you have to give lectures to a large class, inject some stimuli between mini lectures while possible. We all know that a normal human being can't sustain his attention for hours. We need to arrange some interesting things from time to time to maintain students' attention. Things that were found to be effective in drawing students' attention include real life problem, authentic examples, examples that are relevant to students, visual representations of important objects or ideas or relationships, stories, humor, and the facts that contradict students' past experience or a given concept. You could either just mention them or use them to start a discussion or a problem-solving activity. In fact, if you want to maximize the interactions in the classroom you could flip your class, like what we discussed in another videos in this module. Although you have a large class, it doesn't mean you can't break them down into smaller groups. If you have enough resources, you can consider running tutorials alongside the lectures. Don't work alone. Work as a team with teaching assistants and other colleagues. Tutorial is the place where you can have more personal interactions with individual students. The other way to engage students is encouraging them to use the office hours. If you remember, one of the seven principles of good practices in undergraduate education introduced in Module 2 is to maintain good contact with students. You can encourage students to discuss their questions with you individually or in group during office hours, keep records of the reoccurring questions, and post them online so that all students will be able to learn from it. I am not just saying this out of blue. This was actually what one of our guest speakers had won his Teaching Excellence Award for. It was well-received by his students. Teaching a large class, the other challenge is heavy workload in marking and giving feedback. The simplest solution might be recruiting teaching assistants to help. But make sure you train them properly beforehand to avoid the inconsistency in marking and ensure the quality of feedback. This would pose some demand on staff training. But once you have an established team. Both you and your students will benefit in the long run. The other thing you can try is to include self-assessment and peer feedback in your course. They urge students to reflect deeper what they've learnt, develop critical thinking skills, and become more responsible and independent in their learning. But of course, like what is critical to the involvement of teaching assistants in marking, you will need to ''train'' your students beforehand as well to ensure they are competent in doing so. It normally involves discussions and explanations of the assessment criteria at the beginning of the course and some practices as well. But once students become competent in these, they would have a better understanding on the subject, the purpose of the assessment, and what they are expected to achieve. Most importantly, the skills needed to assess and give feedback, such as being able to review one's own performance, identify learning gaps, and formulate strategies for further development, are very important for lifelong learning. It will totally worth the time invested. One last thing, don't forget that we have a lot of software and technological assessment tools that are embedded in the learning manage systems, which support automatic marking and instant feedback. You can check with the relevant supporting unit in your university and take the advantage of the modern technology.
