Engineering Active Learning for Large Classes
I return to teaching a ninety-student section of core literature in January and I’ve been turning my mind to introducing as much active learning as possible under less than ideal circumstances. Fortunately, there will be one significant difference in my assigned lecture hall this time. In the past, my assigned lecture halls have had fixed, tiered seating, usually with small-surfaced desks, and limited space for moving in the aisles. My newly assigned lecture hall, however, though it still has tiered seating, has long, wide tables and, more importantly, chairs on rollers so that concentric rows of students may turn to face each other over their tables as they consult on group work.
On my Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule come January, we will be assembled as a group of ninety on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then on Fridays that assemblage will divide into six different sections of fifteen students where they will be taught by the three Graduate Teaching Assistants assigned to me. Obviously, the break-out sessions on Fridays should lend themselves quite easily to active learning strategies, but orchestrating active learning for a group of ninety in two fifty-minute sessions is, one might say, an engineering puzzle.
In similar circumstances some of my peers have used the think-pair-share strategy, which is just what it sounds like: turn to one of your neighbors, discuss the question posed, and share your thoughts later. But frankly, I have never thought this to be particularly effective in large classes. Students are often hesitant to talk to strangers whom they just happen to be seated next to, and this also assumes that at least one of each pair has prepared for class and that, so far removed from the teacher in the physical space of the classroom, the students would actually discuss the question. Sure, a few would cooperate, but those are probably the students who would most likely thrive regardless of what learning environment they inhabit.
What I would like are groups of five conferring over assigned prompts, each presenting its results to their peers afterward, as I do in my thirty-student sections of core literature, and obviously I can’t have eighteen groups of five responding to eighteen prompts in fifty minutes, but if I work out a rotation and a division of labor, then I may be able to make it work.
So this is what I have planned at this point for my Monday and Wednesday sessions. On the days we meet as a class of ninety, I will have five groups of five conferring ten to twelve minutes on their assigned prompts based on that day’s assigned reading. During this conference time, the other sixty-five students will be writing responses online to a prompt posted in the Canvas discussion board that I will have timed to leave open only for the duration of that specific class session. Everyone, in theory, then stays busy during those ten to twelve minutes. Then each of the five conferring groups that day will take five to seven minutes to share their responses with the entire class. This way, we would be cycling through all the students about every two weeks.
Both the group collaboration and the individual reflection that occur on Mondays and Wednesdays would be reinforced as weighted categories in a class participation rubric set up in Canvas grading. Additionally, I and my three GTAs would be circulating about the hall to assist with responses and to keep everyone on task. As per usual, a selection of the semester’s prompts would become short essay questions on the mid-term and final examinations.
Assigned seating, at least as far as group assignments go, will be the key to making this work. I will need to have the students assigned to their groups before the semester begins, and then, on the first day, have the tables labelled to indicate where each group sits, which would also keep the students closer to each other and to myself and the GTAs, since ninety students would only halfway fill this lecture hall. I believe that meeting with my GTAs to prepare for this set-up just before the semester begins, sharing detailed instructions with the undergraduates through a Canvas announcement (and a concurrent email) just before the semester begins, and having the room adequately prepared on day one should help the semester plan get under weigh.
