2. Senior Lecturer in School of MACE
Part-time Doctoral Researcher
Chartered Engineer and Project Manager
Teacher of very large-classes (at UG and PGT)
Pragmatist
9. 80:20 rule
Build incrementally year on year
Less is more
Innovate cautiously
10.
11. “Flipping the classroom” may not be appropriate for
your class Long live the traditional lecture
“Bring your own device” – BYOD
MOOCS
Students as partners
……..
12. The “Iron Triangle” of assessment design
Meaningful
Equitable Manageable
Source: http://fionasaunders.co.uk/meaningful-equitable-and-manageable-the-iron-triangle-of-assessment-design/
14. Fiona Saunders
School of Mechanical, Aerospace & Civil Engineering
Room E18, Pariser Building
Tel: 0161 306 3738
Email: fiona.saunders@manchester.ac.uk
Twitter: @FionaCSaunders
Blog www.fionasaunders.co.uk
15. Does my experience resonate with you ?
If not, how is your experience different?
Do you have other teaching large class tips to add to
my list?
Editor's Notes
Pragmatist both in research philosophy and approach to teaching
As academics I think we can often feel like this image here of an overloaded truck – competing demands on our time, research, teaching, admin, student experience and NSS. Who feels like this some days ?
Large class teaching can be one more pressure that we have to deal with – with the challenges of managing student expectations, being available to students but also having a life outside work, and perhaps worst of all the relentlessness and never-ending nature of the marking.
My early days in academia were a baptism of fire. I arrived from a career in industry - at the start of Jan 2008, and within three weeks I had to design and start to deliver two new semester 2 units – alone, one UG, one PGT, with 300 and 80 students respectively, with no university teaching experience behind me ! Oh yes, and all this on a 0.6 contract. I survived and lived to tell the tail. So now in 2014, I have a few more grey hairs and a lots more confidence and I want to share some reflections on the teaching of large classes and tips for doing this more effectively.
When I asked for help in the early days, about how to deliver good lectures to very large classes, a distinguished elder scholar who shall remain nameless retorted “I just wouldnt do them” – not that helpful. My hope today is to offer tips that are a bit more useful than that, yet grounded in the reality that large classes are not going to go away and we as academics need to deal with them.
The bit above the water is what your students see – the performance, the content, the delivery, the learning
But 90% of a typical iceberg is below the water – This is the challenge for us as lecturers.
Logistics – I have been frustrated continually over the years by the inability of the university sort out its timetabling – for example I have had to deliver lectures in different venues, each week, to mine and the students huge annoyance. On occasion I have delivered a lecture on th etage of the Royal Northern College of Music as no on campus room was available. How can you do small group work, if you one your own with 200 students in a tiered lecture theatre ? What is your lecture relies on multi-media and the technology in the lecture room lets you down. Matters of logistics are a challenge – and when the class size is great – the challenge is magnified, and the risk of potential embarrassment greater
Sketched out a quick framework on the train – Classic 2*2 matrix – Size of class on one axis and familiarity of students with UK educational system on the other. Mapped our MACE programmes onto this – it does generalise in that not all our 3rd /4th year UG units are small, and at 1st year level different programmes will have different proportions of home/overseas students but it does start to highlight the very different types of classes we are confronted with in MACE. I teach 4th year UG, Professional dev progs and MOP, all are very different and my teaching is adapted accordingly. For example I flip my lectures on the Professional Development programmes so that the students read all the course material off line and the lectures are about active discussion and presentations. My MOP teaching 200plus students (and that’s an option) – a minority highly familiar with UK educational context, but overall from 30 nationalities, 85% English not first language and my lecture in week 1 is their very first experience of the UK educational system. Acknowledge the make up of your cohort and make this the starting point for your pedagogy
A good lecture does simply happen, nor does it emerge overnight or at the last minute. Not in my experience anyway. Begin early with the intended learning outcomes. Think carefully about what pedagogy you will use help the students achieve these. Are you sticking with a traditional lecture, or will you look to flip it, how will you assess the students etc. Individual lecture plans are key to my teaching – partly as it helps me feel in control and thereby reduces the performance anxiety, partly as they help structure the learning and ensure that you stay on track.
My lectures which are often 3 hours in length comprise a mixture of short power-point presentations, interspersed with learning activities or class discussions. Every 10minutes I pause, ask a question or otherwise breakup my delivery. The last 30 mins is devoted to tutorial time so that individual students have the opportunity to ask me questions, check points of understanding. Students are expected to do pre-reading of case studies before the class, which are used to exemplify the learning in the class
Assessment in a large class is a massive challenge and I will talk more about this on another slide
Reflect – I reflect at the end of every class on what has gone well and what has not gone so well and I make a note of this on the individual lecture plans, then when I come to prepare the material for the next time around I can make the required changes easily – either add material, add additional tutorial questions or video/audio explanations or remove/rewrite material
Get your material, unit design and assessment 80% there. You will spend a lot of time trying to perfect it to not much gain
Dont try to get everything in place in year 1 – build materials incrementally – add rich media, video tutorials year by year
Less is often more – don’t try to cover everything in your lectures – get your key learning points across, key concepts and use lots and lots of examples to help students grasp the concepts. There is a temptation especially in the early days to jam lots and lots into your lectures in case you run out of material, but better to finish a little early and allow time for students to approach you after the lecture if necessary. If adding elearning activities then take out other materials to keep student workloads manageable
Innovate with care – I am an innovator and am generally not afraid to try new things, but with very large classes any problems are exacerbated due to the sheer size of the cohort so be cautious about radical innovation (eg wikis nearly broke me – 250 students untested Confluence wiki, linked to BB via a power link.
Lots of examples of great practice on Blackboard – Here’s a few examples from MACE – Dedicated YouTube channel to teaching of structural engineering concepts, use of discussion boards to deepen students knowledge and understanding, MCQ quizzes to embed learning from lecture and use of Ipad app, explain everything to record video solutions to tutorials and exam questions.
However good and ubiquitous gets – it remains a tool, an enabler and not our master. Select the technology that suits and enhances your pedagogy. Start small and build up. I use rich media (narrated slides, video clips to explain core concepts, and provide model exam answers), I use Blackboard discussion board and announcements as an important communication tool between me and students and electronic coursework submission ans marking. But I use manual systems if they work better – for example a show of hands in lass tells me as much as an electronic voting system and is 100% reliable !
Does everyone know what the flipped class room is? Its where the core lecture material is delivered outside of the lecture (via workbooks, video and audio and the lecture time is used for discussions, doing examples, tutorial time etc. Move from sage on the stage to a guide on the side. For my MOP students, arriving in Manchester and being exposed to my lectures as their first experience of the UK, we move gradually, gradually acclimatising them to interactive lectures, in class discussions in semester 1 and colleagues like Richard here are then able to move more to a pure flipped model in semester 2
BYOD, MOOCs, students as partners –all current trends in HE
Massive open online courses – I did one once, or at least started one – I rechristened it quickly “Massive Overload in Online Content” and dropped out after week 3 !
Students as partners – getting students to learning materials, and design of course content
There are others, social media, collaborative learning etc.
Always think about these buzzwords/trends in the light of your own class, your own pedagogy, your ow teaching preferences
I saved the hardest challenge to last – getting assessment right in large classes is very problematic in my experience. I have tried group posters with 300 plus students, group based wikis with 250 students, traditional individual essays of varying length, Bb based multiple choice quizzes, case study analysis, multiple choice examinations, all essay exams
Whilst there are pros and cons of each of the above approaches, none of them have enabled me to be confident that my assessments fulfill all three of the above criteria; namely that my assessments are meaningful, equitable and manageable. For example, an individual essay, if well set, should be meaningful in terms of meeting learning outcomes and developing independent thinking, and equitable in terms of rewarding individual effort but with a cohort of 250+taught by a single member of staff it is certainty not manageable ! In contrast a group-based wiki assessment makes marking more manageable; if well designed, it can definitely be meaningful but even with an element of peer assessment, can it truly be equitable to all students in the cohort?
Questions in my mind currently are around
Do we maintain individual or move towards more group based assignments ?
Does each unit require both coursework and examination style assessment?
Should we be combining assessments across several units or stick with one separate assessment for each unit?
I do my best with my large class teaching – but perfection will always elude me
On a good day, I teach as gracefully as a swan – albeit with my legs paddling furiously below the surface – I glide around the lecture theatre, and have the students eating out of my hands
On a bad day, I am more like this frazzled character, suffer from short term memory failure, I get annoyed that my students show up late, or don’t contribute to lectures, or the audio in the lecture theatre is not working properly for my you tube video clips
Thanks you for listening – I hope it was useful
