Engagement in Large Classes

While encouraging class participation is an important consideration in any class, it can be especially difficult for instructors of large classes. This page presents the many reasons for engaging students despite these challenges, as well as strategies to help you overcome common barriers. 

Importance of Engagement in Large Classes

Large classes, which range in size depending on instructional contexts from 50 students to over 1000, often rely on lectures as the main instructional tool. While lecturing is a good strategy to provide lots of information quickly, relying solely on lectures can have negative impacts on student learning. Traditional lecturing involving one-way communication from the instructor to the students limits the ability of the students to engage with the material. This limits long term recall, with research noting that students only retain about 5% of what they learn from lectures, compared with up to 90% from more engaged activities like teaching others. Such benefits point to the importance of actively involving students in the learning. 

Large classes also face unique challenges in relation to distractions. In one study across large classes at Colorado University Boulder, 56% of students reported being distracted half of the time or more, citing other students talking, other students’ screens and difficulty hearing as the most common reasons. Unsurprisingly, other research has noted that without interventions to break-up lecture time, student engagement declines over class time. In comparison, other research has investigated the average time students spent on task over the course of an interactive lecture, and found engagement ranged between 80-95% over the course of the lecture.

Large classes often introduce issues of student feelings of anonymity and perceptions of the instructor as the carrier of information, positioning students as passive participants in learning. While in some cases students need to be introduced to new concepts before they engage with them, relegation to passive learning throughout an entire course can limit students’ ability to develop higher order thinking skills.

As such, engaging students in large classes is a necessary and important part of teaching large classes, and we offer some strategies and considerations for integration below. 

Strategies For Engagement in Large Classes

There are various strategies for active learning which can be adapted for large class teaching. Engagement in large classes does not need to be long or complex to be effective. Engagement can be integrated in ways that supplement, rather than replace, existing lectures and need not be overly time consuming. We offer some strategies for integrating engagement in large classes.

Incorporate lecture breaks

Engagement in large classes does not need to take up the entirety of the class time, but if students are not engaged throughout the lecture, their attention and material retention will drop significantly. Consider chunking your lectures into blocks of approximately 15-20 minutes. After each block, integrate an opportunity for students to engage with the material. This may be individually, in small groups, or in a whole class discussion.

Use digital polling

Digital polling tools can allow you to engage all students in your course. Polls can offer multiple choice, short answer, and response options which can allow you to gauge students’ understanding of the concepts or gather opinions from a large audience at once. Western has institutional access to iClicker , and other polling software exists with different functionalities, but require paid subscriptions.

Offer chances for peer engagement

Having students engage with their peers can be extremely valuable. For example, a Think-Pair-Share activity, where students are given time to think independently, partner with a peer, and then discuss with the whole group, can be a meaningful way to allow students to consolidate their learning, and connect with their peers to hear different perspectives.

Use individual reflection

Individual reflections are a great way to allow students to think independently and hear what your students are thinking, or what they may be struggling with. These can be in the form of One-Minute Papers, and may be framed around the muddiest point which students are confused about or the students’ greatest takeaways.

In this video, Dr. Atkinson from the Department of Psychology, talks about integration of active learning in his large first-year course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N43-HoVriH8 

Challenges to Engagement in Large Classes

Engagement in large classes comes with a series of challenges that need to be considered. We discuss them below along with some strategies to overcome them. To start, in the following video, Dr. Atkinson from the Department of Psychology, talks about challenges to engagement in large classes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Soe5rdeb9M

Timing

Large classes, especially in first and second year courses, may be under tight time constraints to offer a lot of material in a short amount of time. If time constraints are relevant, selecting activities and approaches which require lower time commitments, such as polling or think-pair-share, may be more appropriate than longer activities like case studies or concept mapping.

Student resistance

If students are used to large classes being primarily lecture driven, they may struggle with classes which expect engagement and may be less likely to participate. They also may be less likely to know the people in the class and therefore more nervous to speak up. Setting the context early within the course for students can help ease this. Discussing with students the benefits of active learning and the importance of engagement in large classes can support buy-in and active participation. Facilitating ice breakers at the start of the term and keeping student groups consistent can help students get to know their classmates and feel comfortable participating.

Staying on task

Making sure students stay on task can be a challenge with a large number of students spread out in a large classroom. If possible, using some TA hours to help facilitate activities and circulate during student engaged time can help your learners stay on task. Courses with a participation grade may also have a deliverable, such as a short-written response based on questions discussed or completion of a worksheet, where students submit something which is briefly reviewed by the TAs and graded on a simple ‘pass’ (submitted and on topic) / ‘fail’ (not submitted or not relevant) binary.

Physical environment

Large lecture halls can offer barriers to facilitating effective engagement with students, with challenges including layout and noise from activity. For layout related challenges, picking activities which require limited student movement, or which have students already seated in their groups prior to engagement can limit these challenges. For noise related challenges, conversation-based activities can result in high volume levels amongst students. Offering shorter conversation prompts can limit off-topic conversations and lower noise levels. Additionally, dividing students into small groups as opposed to partners can divide the number of voices speaking at the same time. 

Additional Resources

Centre for Teaching and Learning, University of Windsor. (n.d.). Strategies for large classes. University of Windsor. https://www.uwindsor.ca/teaching-online/327/large-classes

McAndrew, A., Dykeman, T., Fell, C., & Nussbaum, B. (2018, October 25). Unpacking the student experience in large lectures. EDUCAUSE Review. https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/10/unpacking-the-student-experience-in-large-lectures

Rosengrant, D., Hearrington, D., & O’Brien, J. (2021). Investigating student sustained attention in a guided inquiry lecture course using an eye tracker. Educational Psychology review, 33(1), 11-26.

Stachowiak, B. (2019, September 6). How to engage students and support learning in large classes. Teaching in Higher Ed. https://teachinginhighered.com/2019/09/06/how-to-engage-students-and-support-learning-in-large-classes/

Zhao, Y. (2021, August 21). How do I retain knowledge? University of Calgary. https://ucalgary.ca/news/how-do-i-retain-knowledge