Faculty Teaching Excellence Program

LARGE LECTURE COURSES: CHALLENGES AND REWARDS

Lucy Chester, Professor, History

Deborah J. Haynes, Professor, Art and Art History

Stefanie Mollborn, Professor, Sociology                                    

We will discuss crucial issues that faculty members face when teaching a large lecture course, especially for the first time. Large enrollment courses, ranging from 75-425 students with 1-8 teaching assistants, can be extremely rewarding, but they present special challenges related to the issues listed below. We welcome a lively discussion with the audience on these topics and will discuss practical suggestions for dealing with them.

Topics the panel or audience might want to discuss include:

-classroom authority as it relates to gender, ethnicity, age, etc.

-uses of technology in large classes, esp. clickers, laptops, and amplification

-faculty and student expectations

-course and instructor organization, including TA management

-evaluation of student work

-peer learning/interactive engagement

-student study skills, esp. note-taking & use of laptops

-lecture pacing

-student attendance, punctuality and courtesy

-Other ideas?

This event will be held in ATLAS 200.