I should be in the twilight of my career as Lehigh Lab Fellow. Instead I'm playing extra innings. The reason is the damnably stimulating seminar that Faculty Development director Greg Reihman put together last spring -- the ITaLLIC project. For several weeks I thought about "Innovations in Teaching Large Lecture Introductory Courses" with Greg; faculty members Gary DeLeo, Diane Hyland, Chuck Smith, Bob Giambattista, and Jerome Liccini; and LTSers Sherri Yerk-Zwikl, Judd Hark, Robin Deily, and Jason Slipp.
The other faculty members were all already teaching large lecture courses. But my goal was to initiate one - the new course I'm teaching now, "American Film: The Essentials." I can't believe I'm saying this, but the course is not as big as I hoped. I was hoping for a round 100 students for this experiment, but after hovering at 75 for a while, it looks like the final count will be around 65. That won't sound "large" to some of you troopers out there, I know, but it's quite a bit larger than my usual fare and large enough that it calls upon pedagogical principles and strategies I'm not used to using. I have to think new.
I have done a lot of course experimenting in the last several years, especially in my time as Lehigh Lab Fellow, but, without exaggeration, I spent (and am still spending) more time thinking (worrying) about this one than any of the others - without doubt because I was itallicized . I feel far out, over the edge in this course, in fact, and perhaps I'll get the opportunity to talk about it in more detail in Lehigh Lab Notes or elsewhere at another time (if I live), but here, for now, I'd like to share just a slice of my thinking that might apply to others, that is, thinking on some fundamental issues concerning "large lecture classes."
1) What is "large"? I'm going to define "large" as the point after which a teacher has difficulty knowing the names of everybody in the class. Ha! I realize that's variable and fuzzy. But I've had classes of 40 and known everybody. I'm having trouble with my current 65. And I know that 100 would be stretching it. Student recognition by the teacher provides a rough and ready measure of when a class is "large." In fact, we should add the student perspective into this as well. A class is large when the students have difficulty knowing each other.
2) We tend to think of "large" and "lecture" as synonymous, as if a large class has to be a lecture class. For instance, one of my English department colleagues said to me, "75 students pre-registered, you poor guy, I guess you're going to have to lecture in that new film course, eh." I find myself wanting to question that assumption. Can a large class be run on some other format than lecture? (And I'm not talking about the addition of separate recitation sessions.) That seems a very interesting question to me. As you will see.
3) The assumption in our seminar was that large lecture courses are here to stay and that our goal was to improve them. But we wouldn't be Lehigh "Lab" if we didn't at least test that assumption, would we?
Why do we have large lecture (introductory) courses? Help me make up a list, you troopers out there - what would you say? We have to because of limited faculty resources? (Would we have any large courses if we had enough faculty to run all courses with a size that enabled teachers to know student names?) Or we want to because they are the best way to deliver information and knowledge? Or we can because "introductory" material lends itself to delivery en masse ? So -- why do you think we have large lecture (introductory) courses?
Here are some points such questions ultimately raised for me as I was planning my large enrollment course. What do you think?
- generally, we should want to avoid having large numbers of students together in a class if it isn't necessary for intellectual, for educational reasons
- there is little reason any more in most cases to bring a large number of students together simply to receive information
- new technology is reducing the need for/the rationale for many lecture courses
- at a top-30 residential university of smallish size and ample means that prides itself on an ethos of community, there should be virtually no classes larger than the number at which the teacher can know everybody's name
Wow, I rather like that last bullet, in fact, as a worthy addition to our Seven Goals for Lehigh.
4) But if we are going to have large classes, though, what are the best reasons to have them? I'm not so sure we always have them for the best reasons now. I doubt large courses were ever on the top of many of our dream Christmas lists. But are there good reasons - educational, intellectual reasons -- for bringing large groups of students together?
That question really intrigues me.
It turns our present situation around - from accepting the fact that we must have large classes and finding ways to improve them to actively developing large classes because there is "intellectual profit" in them for our students.
Ask yourself, Troopers, what "intellectual profit" could there be in consolidating large groups of students? What intellectual value is there in such a class that students might not gain in any other way? Why besides economy and efficiency might such courses be desirable? What can you do with a large class that you can't do with a small one? What, for the individual student, is good about being in a class like that? -- Where does your mind go with that?
For one thing, mine headed to diversity. A large class potentially concentrates a greater range of diversity than a small one: diversity of knowledge, background, culture, experience, skills, styles, visions, and so forth. What is the reason for worrying about diversity so much at admission if we don't bring it to bear in the classroom as much as possible? Aren't we wasting the opportunity provided by that large lecture hall filled with different students if we don't engage that diversity somehow on some level? Isn't the application of that diversity more important in the classroom than in extra-curricular, social, and residential areas? These are the kinds of crazy questions I began to ask myself.
So when I came to think about my ITaLLIC course, what stimulated yet simultaneously stunted me was attracting a large number of students and finding a way to capitalize on their diversity, finding a way to maximize their productive interaction. My (mostly humanities, of course) circle of colleagues tends to see a large class as an obstacle to our educational goals: "75 students, Gallagher, well, that really limits what you can do." But I wanted to see it as an opportunity. Frankly, most of the strategies about improving large classes that I came across felt like well-intentioned but temporary band-aids rather than substantial means of renewal -- things like employing periodic buzz groups or having students pair and square, or even the "clickers" we are now experimenting with here. In my mind, such strategies don't touch the essential lecture culture of the large enrollment course, and thus the essential problems with such large enrollment courses.
What I am experimenting with is using the iPod to take the lecture out of the center of the large enrollment course and thereby encouraging "a culture of conversation" as the main activity in the course. Now this is too complicated a culture shift to explain briefly here, and it is too early in the experiment for me to have much substantive to say about it. Let's do that another time.
But I wanted to suggest the results of my fresh look at large classes, large lecture classes. First, I wish we didn't have any (I note that we've moved from 20 th to 16 th in the U.S. News and World Report 's ranking of universities with classes with fewer than 20 students!), especially since we take such pride in our community ethos. But, second, I'm trying to think about ways of playing to the strength of such courses. I think there's something there that we haven't tapped yet.
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