Teaching large classes presents unique challenges and opportunities for instructors. Connecting with and engaging students becomes more difficult, and the grading process can be overwhelming due to the volume of students. However, large classes also offer a dynamic environment for fostering a collective learning experience. 

The context of teaching can vary greatly, and in this guide, we define large classes as those with enrollments exceeding 50 students. We’ll explore effective strategies for managing such classes, encompassing multiple stages from initial course design approaches to in-class teaching techniques. At the end of each section, we will also recommend technical tools that could benefit your teaching.

Course Design

Just as architectural blueprints lay the foundation for a sturdy building, meticulous course planning is the cornerstone of creating effective learning environments and experiences for students. Moreover, strategic course design streamlines instructors’ workload and mitigates potential issues, reducing the complexity of troubleshooting issues during teaching (Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation, n.d.). We recommend the backwards course design approach, where instructors start by identifying learning objectives and then plan for assessments and instructional activities. Here are several tailored strategies for designing large enrollment courses.

Consider situational factors . When planning your course, it’s crucial to think about situational factors that might affect your teaching approach and students’ learning experience. In large classrooms, the number of enrolled students is a significant factor; the experience of teaching a cohort of 50 versus 100 students can vary greatly. Additionally, the physical layout of the classroom is important, as it can affect class dynamics and interaction opportunities. For example, if the classroom layout restricts student movement, you’ll need to design your lessons in a way that facilitates interaction without requiring students to leave their seats.

Know your students. Although it might be challenging to connect with every student in a large cohort, you could prevent feelings of alienation by gaining insights into their backgrounds. Consider distributing a pre-course survey to learn more about your students. What prior knowledge and experience do they bring to the classroom? Do they have access to learning materials and essential technologies? Do they have specific access needs? LILE provides a Getting to Know Your Students survey template, which you can tailor to fit your course context. 

Talk to experienced colleagues. Teaching isn’t a solitary task, and talking to fellow instructors who have taught similar classes could generate valuable insights and practical suggestions. You may reach out to colleagues within your department or across disciplines, or join teaching communities to exchange ideas and learn from each other. For example, LILE provides the Visit a Classroom program for faculty to share teaching experiences and practices in a supporting, non-evaluative way.

Assessment Design

Assessment is essential for demonstrating students’ mastery of learning objectives. It provides crucial evidence on student performance while also offering students the opportunities to practice and receive feedback. However, in a large classroom setting, grading and giving feedback can become a substantial workload for instructors. To balance the need for quality assessments with a manageable workload, it’s important to thoughtfully consider your assessment approach in advance. 

Develop effective rubrics. For open-ended assessments, we recommend creating rubrics with meaningful performance criteria and level descriptions. Rubrics foster transparent communication, allowing students to understand the assignment’s expectations more clearly. For instructors, rubrics can streamline the grading process as well as improve consistency and efficiency. Reusing rubrics across courses also saves time in the long run. The Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) offers a collection of VALUE rubrics that concentrate on a variety of skills, available for free use. 

Incorporate formative assessment. Offer smaller, more frequent low-stakes assessments throughout the semester as quick check-ins, or replace larger assessments with a series of formative ones. This approach enables you to monitor student progress and make timely adjustments to your teaching, such as correcting common misconceptions. Moreover, students benefit from increased practice opportunities and grow their mastery over time. Concerned about increased workload? Continuous formative feedback can reduce the work later in the semester. In addition, not all formative assessments need to be graded; simple Classroom Assessment Techniques can provide useful feedback without the need for grading. For more assessment approaches, LILE’s teaching guide on Alternative Strategies for Assessment and Grading is a valuable resource. 

Utilize diverse feedback channels. In addition to your own input, consider incorporating feedback from various sources such as Teaching Assistants, student peer reviews, or automated computer systems. Well-structured peer reviews can provide quality feedback and foster a collaborative learning environment. Some digital textbooks come equipped with online homework platforms that could auto-grade student responses. Employing multiple feedback mechanisms also helps maintain a timely feedback schedule, providing ample time for students to reflect and improve their work.

Technical Tools

As Duke’s primary Learning Management System (LMS), Canvas offers useful features to facilitate the assessment process. 

  • Speedgrader is a built-in grading tool in Canvas that allows instructors to grade assignments in Canvas, rather than having to download and reupload them. Instructors can write text comments, record media comments, and leave in-line annotations on student submissions, making it convenient to give explanatory and high-quality feedback.
  • The Rubrics tool allows instructors to attach a rubric to an assignment, which clearly communicates expectations to students and streamline the grading process. Instructors can also reuse the rubric across different assignments and courses.

Gradescope is an external platform that integrates with Canvas, specializing in the grading of written exams, homework assignments, and the auto-grading of submitted codes. Unlike Canvas Speedgrader, Gradescope allows instructors to create rubrics dynamically during the grading process, providing more flexibility.

Classroom Teaching Techniques

When it comes to class time, engaging students is a major challenge for large classroom teaching. Students often feel a lack of interactions with the instructor (Cooper & Robinson, 2000), while instructors struggle to build meaningful connections with each student.

While lectures are a popular teaching approach in large courses due to their ease of classroom management, research suggests that they are not as effective due to low student engagement and limited information retention (Schmidt et al., 2015). However, this doesn’t mean you need to abandon lectures entirely. Instead, consider integrating active learning activities into your lectures to enhance engagement and learning outcomes.

  • Break down long lectures into smaller chunks and intersperse them with interactive activities. Since people have limited cognitive capacity and learn new information best when presented in meaningful chunks, pausing the lecture after introducing a key concept and having students act on it can enhance knowledge retention (Moss, 2023).
  • Quick quizzes are an easy technique to make your lecture more interactive. After asking a question, let students participate in a quick poll. They can use their fingers to indicate the answer or utilize technical student engagement tools. This approach encourages students to actively think and participate, and allows the instructor to gauge student understanding and adjust the teaching accordingly.
  • Modeling a problem-solving process by thinking aloud is proven to be effective to enhance student learning(Arshad, 2009). Think-aloud means verbalizing while engaged in a task, which articulates your cognitive process so as to help students understand and develop their own processing skills (Davison et al., 1997). Different subjects can apply this approach in various ways. For example, a computer science instructor can live code with students, while a medical instructor can model the process of arriving at a diagnosis or treatment plan.
  • Peer instruction encourages students to interact and get feedback from peers. For example, think-pair-share prompts students to first think individually about a question, then discuss their thoughts with a classmate sitting nearby. This method balances individual thinking time with peer discussion. Peer review is another popular technique, which asks students to evaluate and provide feedback on the work of a peer.
  • Time activities. Using a timer helps structure an activity and enhance its inclusivity. Limit each activity to a set amount of time, indicate the time frame before starting, and display a timer during the activity. Additionally, give a verbal reminder 1 or 2 minutes before the activity ends and prompt students to take turns speaking. This helps students be aware of the time and ensures that no student dominates the conversation, making activities more inclusive and effective. 

Consider adopting a flipped classroom model to optimize class time. In this approach, students study instructional materials to gain necessary knowledge before class, and apply their learning during class with the instructor’s guidance. This method has been proven to enhance learning outcomes in large classrooms (Eichler & Peeples, 2016) by enabling students to consume new information at their own pace, allowing instructors to provide direct support timely, and increasing student engagement (Van Alten et al., 2019).

  • While flipping the entire course can be demanding, you may choose to apply it to just a few modules. 
  • Start by planning class time and designing class activities. Next, curate or develop pre-class study materials and teach students how to effectively use the materials on their own (The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning , n.d.). 
  • For more insights on implementing the flipped model in large classes, review experiences from Duke instructors: Chemistry 201 Spring 2015, Physics 142 Spring 2015.

Technical Tools

Wooclap is an online polling tool that can serve as a student response system. Using Wooclap, instructors can display live polling questions in class, allowing students to actively engage by responding on their devices, such as laptops and smartphones. Instructors can then see student responses and display them on the big screen for everyone to see.

Fostering a Learning Community

In large classrooms, the sheer number of peers can be daunting for students, making it difficult to connect with each other. Given that the sense of belonging enhances the learning experience (Pittman & Richmond, 2007), instructors can take conscientious approaches to cultivate a learning community even within a large cohort.

Foster a welcoming class environment. Prompt students to introduce themselves to their neighbors at the beginning of the semester, and promote social interaction throughout. Familiarizing themselves with classmates can alleviate feelings of isolation and nurture future collaboration and friendship.

Implement structured group learning. While coordinating group activities in large classes can be challenging, it is feasible with meticulous planning and support from teaching assistants or co-instructors. Segmenting the classroom into smaller units can be helpful, so that each co-instructor has a smaller number of students to oversee and support. To add structure to group activities, assign specific roles and rotate these roles throughout the semester to prevent workload imbalances and foster engagement. Learn more about how teamwork works in an auditorium-style classroom with over 100 students from Duke instructors’ experiences: Chemistry 201 Spring 2015, Physics 142 Spring 2015.

Provide digital spaces for dialogue and collaboration. Utilize online platforms such as discussion forums or messaging tools to create virtual spaces that transcend the constraints of time and location. Additionally, online discussions provide alternative avenues for engagement, particularly benefiting students who feel less comfortable speaking during class.

Technical Tools

Canvas Discussion serves as an asynchronous forum for student online discussions. Instructors can either create ungraded posts to encourage conversations among students, or assign graded posts as part of the course’s assessment framework.

Ed Discussion is another online discussion forum, featuring an intuitive user interface that organizes discussions in categories and threads.

Hypothes.is is a collaborative annotation platform, where students can collaboratively annotate and discuss web pages and documents.

VoiceThread is an interactive collaboration and sharing tool, enabling students to build online presentations by adding images, documents, videos, and other media. Other users can view presentations and add comments for discussion.

Working with TAs

Many classes come with Teaching Assistants (TAs) to help manage tasks such as grading, leading lab sections, and proctoring exams. Particularly in large courses, the number of TAs could be substantial, in which case communication and coordination with the TAs could be another big task.

Provide structured support to TAs. TAs’ backgrounds may vary a lot, however, regardless of their experience level, providing structured support to TAs contributes to a well-organized team. Regular meetings can bolster support and community, during which you could provide guidance, review course contents, or just leave the time for TAs to share challenges and suggestions. An online communication channel, like Slack, can further enhance communication and support systems.

Ensure consistent grading practices. Consistent grading is essential for assessment reliability. To promote grading uniformity, it’s essential to meet with TAs before the semester to align on grading criteria. Even with rubrics, people’s interpretations toward the same description can vary. Conducting a few rounds of grading practice and having everyone compare the grades they assign will be helpful to calibrate grading criteria.

Logistical Work

When classroom sizes become large, managing logistics can become overwhelming and time-consuming. Strategically planning for logistical tasks helps reduce your workload.

Clearly communicate expectations with students at the start of the course and remind them throughout the semester. For example, clarify course policies such as attendance, assignment extensions, and late submissions in your syllabus, in a FAQs section in Canvas, or during class sessions. Additionally, stating how often and how quick you’ll reply to student emails can help set expectations and create boundaries.

Streamline logistical communication. For instance, use Google forms for specific types of student communications, such as extension requests or notification of missed class, to help reduce the volume of emails. For office hours, ask students to sign up for appointments to avoid long lines.

Technical tools

Canvas Announcements allows you to share important information with all users within your course or with specific sections. By default, students will receive email notifications of these announcements.

Acknowledgements

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Yesenia Velasco and Dorian Canelas, who shared their invaluable insights and experiences for the creation of this guide. Their contributions have been instrumental in shaping the strategies and recommendations presented. 

Resources

References

Arshad, N. (2009, March). Teaching programming and problem solving to CS2 students using think-alouds. In Proceedings of the 40th ACM technical symposium on computer science education (pp. 372-376).

Cooper, J. L., & Robinson, P. (2000). The argument for making large classes seem small. New directions for teaching and learning, 2000(81), 5-16.

Davison, G. C., Vogel, R. S., & Coffman, S. G. (1997). Think-aloud approaches to cognitive assessment and the articulated thoughts in simulated situations paradigm. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 65(6), 950.

Eichler, J. F., & Peeples, J. (2016). Flipped classroom modules for large enrollment general chemistry courses: a low barrier approach to increase active learning and improve student grades. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 17(1), 197-208.

Moss, P. G. (2023, February 13). Chunking as a pedagogy. Chunking as a Pedagogy. https://paulgmoss.com/2023/02/13/chunking-as-a-pedagogy/. 

Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation, University at Buffalo. (n.d.). Evaluating Course Design. https://www.buffalo.edu/catt/teach/develop/evaluate/evaluating-course-design.html.

Pittman, L. D., & Richmond, A. (2007). Academic and psychological functioning in late adolescence: The importance of school belonging. The Journal of Experimental Education, 75(4), 270-290.

Schmidt, H. G., Wagener, S. L., Smeets, G. A., Keemink, L. M., & van Der Molen, H. T. (2015). On the use and misuse of lectures in higher education. Health Professions Education, 1(1), 12-18.

The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University. (n.d.). Flipped classrooms. https://bokcenter.harvard.edu/flipped-classrooms.

Van Alten, D. C., Phielix, C., Janssen, J., & Kester, L. (2019). Effects of flipping the classroom on learning outcomes and satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 28, 100281.

ChatGPT-3.5 was used to review and improve the word-choice for an early draft of this blog post.