Teaching a large class is often an unwelcome assignment due to many vexing problems associated with the sheer size of the class. These problems include dealing with how to encourage attendance in large classes, how to prevent academic dishonesty, how to get feedback from students about the course and how to make a big class interactive. Like other classes, “large classes work best when students take an active interest in the subject and when teachers personalise their presentations and respect their students. However, while these basic principles of good teaching apply in large as well as small classes, the sheer number of students in a large class can magnify some problems that might be more manageable in a smaller class” (Enerson, Johnson, Milner & Plank, 1997). The teaching of large classes is therefore challenging. “Large classes are not necessarily less effective than smaller ones, but they do require more conscious effort and planning” (Enerson, et al., 1997). Also, the innovative use of modern day tools such as IT, communication technologies and the Internet can help overcome some of the problems associated with teaching large classes.

So, what is large? If ‘large’ is defined as 100 or more students per class or “one that has too many students to learn names by the end of the semester” (Enerson, et al., 1997), then a class of 1400 students is ultra large. Such is the typical size of a class taking the module EG1109 “Statics and Mechanics of Materials” which I have been teaching at the Faculty of Engineering for the past few years. While this article will not address all the various issues and difficulties associated with teaching very large classes, it would focus on describing some specific techniques I employed to overcome some difficulties inherent in the teaching of large classes.

Participatory workshop lectures

A major challenge that one often encounters when teaching a large class is how to engage the students in active learning throughout the lesson as students tend to be passive in the learning process especially in a lecture theatre. Using the monologue way to teach large classes does not attract students to attend classes. The problem is further compounded if the materials presented during such lectures are taken directly from the textbooks and/or lecture notes. In such a situation, only outstanding speakers would be able to hold the students’ attention for the entire period. There is therefore a need to promote students’ interaction in class to help them focus and sustain their attention on the underlying concepts.

In a bid to stimulate students’ interest in the module and hold their attention for the entire lecture, I have adopted a participatory workshop-lecture teaching technique where interactions between the lecturer and students as well as amongst students are encouraged. In such workshop-lectures, students worked with me through the lecture materials (published in the form of a book) that contain partially blanked-out portions at critical locations. By working through the notes, students are not only actively engaged throughout the lecture but also given the opportunity to think at each step and literally learn on the spot. Short concept quizzes with multiple choice answers are also posed at appropriate moments and students are encouraged to discuss with one another to arrive at the correct answers to these quizzes.

Editable PowerPoint slides

Whilst teaching with PowerPoint slides offer crisp, clear and quality presentation, it can sometimes be too fast for students to follow compared to the chalk and blackboard or markers and overhead transparencies method. Another disadvantage of using PowerPoint slides to teach is that lecturers are unable to do live editing (e.g. highlighting or inserting additional notes) on the slides, which is often required to reinforce certain points. In an effort to combine the advantages of both PowerPoint and traditional blackboard modes of teaching, PowerPoint slides with blanked-out portions are presented during lectures. Thanks to the advent of the Tablet PCs and pen-based computing, I can edit the slides live using a pen and coloured electronic ink (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Writing on PowerPoint Slide

This method combines both the advantages of PowerPoint slide presentation and the advantages of teaching with the traditional blackboard. For more effective communication and explanation of difficult concepts during lectures, I use the various animation features permitted in PowerPoint. The use of animation and live editing of the PowerPoint slides has helped me to conduct lessons for a large class the effectively.

IMPARO—An advanced web-based tutorial system

Almost all online Courseware Management Systems (CMS) focus too much on file management (e.g. management of lecture notes or course content) but too little on tutorial and assessment for students. The lack of online tutorial and assessment makes the existing CMSs incomplete. Realising this shortcoming of the existing CMSs and the fact that web-based education is becoming an important field, an innovative advanced web-based tutorial management system called IMPARO was developed by the Faculty of Engineering and used to create e-Tutorials for the module EG1109. The IMPARO system boasts of numerous innovative features including one that allows the lecturers to manage and create e-Learning tutorials effortlessly in a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) manner without any HTML or JavaScript programming knowledge. IMPARO also subsequently serves as a hosting platform for online learning when students do these tutorials at their own pace.

While most online evaluating systems lack advanced diagnostics capability and are limited only to multiple choice type questions, IMPARO features a wider variety of question types—numerical, symbolic, multiple choice and essay question. The symbolic question feature (see Figure 2) is particularly interesting and innovative. It is intelligent enough to recognise and mark correctly the almost infinite ways of answering a symbolic question.

Figure 2. Symbolic Input Type Question

Another major innovative feature of IMPARO is its ability to allow educators to create online tutorials with advanced diagnostic capabilities by ‘training’ the system to diagnose common mistakes which students would likely make during problem solving. To discourage copying, the parameters used in the questions are automatically randomised and unique for each student. Students may also practice the same question as many times as desired since the values of parameters used are different each time. Students are thus able to learn and progress at his/her own pace, which is not possible in a traditional classroom-based tutorial.

Another powerful feature of IMPARO is its comprehensive monitoring and assessment capabilities. From the monitoring window, lecturers can monitor the students’ performance at a glance so that students who are lagging behind can easily be identified from a large group and rectified at an early stage. Lecturers are also able to identify the questions which the students have difficulties in solving and follow-up with a further explanation of the solution.

Virtual beam experiment

The availability of high speed network bandwidth coupled with advances in PC speed makes it possible to ‘bring’ the laboratory to a large group of students in the form of virtual experiments. To overcome the limitations of traditional physical laboratories, a web-based virtual laboratory on a simple beam experiment has been developed (illustrated by a sample snapshot in Figure 3).

Figure 3. Virtual Simple Beam Experiment

The virtual beam experiment is a computer simulation of the actual physical experiment using realistic graphics and images which allows students to ‘conduct’ the experiment conveniently over the web in an open-ended manner just like in the actual physical experiment where learning takes place through doing the experiment. The intention of the development for this particular module is to encourage the students to go through and be familiar with the concepts and procedure before going to the physical laboratory to conduct the actual experiment. To make the virtual instrument feel more realistic, multimedia animations allow the students to observe the effect of loads on the virtual beam. The system will record and mark automatically whatever results submitted by the students. With the adoption of the virtual experiment, students taking the module were able to conduct their experiments anytime, anywhere without any worries about the scheduling problem despite the enormous class size.

Conclusion

The teaching of large class is truly challenging and requires more conscious effort and planning in order to make learning and teaching more effective in such an environment. With the innovative use of modern day tools such as IT, communication technologies and the Internet, some of the problems associated with teaching large classes can be overcome. Finally, it is important to note that unless there is continuous effort and readiness to innovate and evaluate one’s teaching practice to improve the way one teaches, stagnation (regression) in teaching performance may well occur.

Reference

Enerson, D.M.; Johnson R.N.; Milner, S. & Plank, K.M. (1997). The Penn State Teacher II: Learning to Teach; Teaching to Learn. Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. The Pennsylvania State University. (Last accessed: 14 May 2004).