Overcoming the challenges of large courses — from teachingprofessor.com by Maryellen Weimer
Excerpt:
The course redesign promotes students’ engagement with a student response system, peer instruction, and active learning strategies that get all students present involved in each day’s planned activity. The learning assistants tackle problems of anonymity. Each are assigned a group of students, and various means are used to connect students with their respective learning assistant. Learning assistants offer study sessions. Students also get email feedback on their exam scores, and those who are struggling are invited to meet with an instructor to develop improvement goals.
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Large courses require special teaching skills; not every teacher has them. Those who do should be supported and rewarded for using them in this most challenging teaching situation. Students at the front end of a college experience deserve the best we can deliver, and often that’s not what they get.