Just a reminder
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Enormous classes, often known as “gen eds,” aren’t enormously pleasant or always conductive to learning.
How often do you see, let alone mingle with, thousands of people? After all, the student population of some schools are 25,000 or more!
This semester, I’ve stood at the head of my core math course (College Algebra, ick!) and wondered how any of my students can learn anything in such an extensively large classroom? How can I ensure that I am recovering material that needs to be recovered and move past material that most of the student body understands? My core math course is so large it feels like I’m standing in the field of Wrigley Field.
Surely, learning in any large lecture hall is no easy task either. In small classes you are more of an individual I can work with as a small group or one on one. You will probably be addressed by name, not by student ID number. You’ll also be more readily heard and so your specific issues can be addressed so you can learn better. After all, I am a guide to be used to find knowledge, not a bank for you to withdraw information and deposit in your mind.
However, in large classes, you’re reduced to a number within a vast pool of numbers. Rarely, if ever, are individual students called upon or even known to their professors. Generally speaking, issues brought up by students have to be proceeded by their ID number so we can look them up in our grade books. (I still use an old fashioned book, not excel or blackboard or anything like that.) The outcome being that the objective of the class (teaching the student how to find the information and use the information once found) is muddled with more distractions than you can count.
What happened to the small class sizes? My favorite classes were Number Theory, Linear Algebra, Calculus III, etc where my class sizes were 17 or less and I started working relationships with my professors on a more personal and professional level and less as a minion being force fed data to regurgitate on command for some exam.
So the question arose:
Can one learn in an environment where you are sandwiched between hundreds of your peers? Can success occur in lecture halls?
Assuming of course you don’t attend more then 1 hour a week of professor office hours for clarifications and to actually learn what you could not in lecture hall. I’m talking about students (99.9% it seems) who never go to office hours and just cruise through the lecture hall.
I was lucky apparently…
My largest class EVER was “Intro to Music” (part of the Liberal Arts thing…), and it was held in an auditorium. 200 students, give or take a few score.
Some of my 100 level Poli Sci classes were 30-35 people. Once I hit my 200 level courses, classes were into the teens.
My 300 and up Poli Sci tended to be about a dozen (with the exception of American Foreign Policy Since WWII which was only offered every 2 years). And I had a pretty fair number of classes that were only a dozen students (my back to back PS370/371 intensive on Public Administration and my 460/461 Labor Relations intensive (though 3 hours Tuesday and Thursday afternoons had its own issues for that Labor Relations double course… :roll: )
I just realized… it is pretty sick that I still remember all of that… Course names… Course NUMBERS, and even my schedule when I took it…
:-o
in my college calc classes we would scan in to show we were there, and then just bolt towards the door again to escape and go smoke. the classes were big enough that no one could know if you were there or not. a plus about big classes like that for the students!
My College Algebra Class (MATH 130) has 217 registered students. I have 3 assistants that help me grade, that’s all they do. Yea, there’s a recitation for everyone once a week, but still. I don’t know nearly 5% of the class! (And I highly doubt all 217 show up on any given day.)
I know what you mean. I go to a fairly small lib. arts school with a good pre-med reputation. So my basic chem/orgo chem/bio classes had 60 kids or so. When I started working my way through 200 and 300 level classes (orgo was a 200-level, however) in my major; the classes began to thin to 15-20 students. By the time I made it to my 400-level classes last year and this year, we have often 10 or less students in the class. This is especially nice, because you really get to know the prof. Few things really beat going out for a beer with your class and prof after discussing evolutionary sociobiology!
@Cmdr:
This semester, I’ve stood at the head of my core math course (College Algebra, ick!) and wondered how any of my students can learn anything in such an extensively large classroom? How can I ensure that I am recovering material that needs to be recovered and move past material that most of the student body understands? My core math course is so large it feels like I’m standing in the field of Wrigley Field.
Well, this is a problem a lot of educators face. Obviously, it is best to keep the class interesting.
I recommend nudity, like Russian weathergirls.
I knoes the five day forecast for Moscow, but I don’t know if it’s going to rain today where I live. Oh wellz.
As far as social mixing - well, that’s what fraternity-sorority orgies are all about.