Teaching the Large College Class: Information For College Administrators
In my department at the University of Rhode Island, almost 90% of student contact hours are delivered by means of large lectures. At the university, over 40% of the faculty is on adjunct status, and many of them teach the large lectures. Their turnover rate is a little over three years. A tiny fraction of them have any training in teaching or managing large classes.
New tenure track faculty are under intense pressure to produce scholarship and grants, and there exist virtually no incentives for them to either teach large classes or do a particularly good job, as there is no tangible reward for doing so. As a result, if they are assigned large classes, they bail as soon as possible, sometimes “buying” their way out of the assignment with grants, thereby adding yet another adjunct to the roster.
As a former department chair, I know how time-consuming and awkward it is to try to adjudicate student (and parent) complaints about untrained large class lecturers, where the student really does have a case about a questionable practice, but for me to interfere would be a violation of academic freedom.
Usually left out of this discussion is consideration of the economic cost of inefficient and unsophisticated large class lecturing. Every student who drops out or transfers after their freshman year as a result of suboptimal large class teaching costs my university $38,000 in non-replaceable tuition. Put another way, if in my large class, I can “salvage” just 10 students through my teaching, I have brought in twice as much money as the average grant overhead in my field. And I can do this every year.
Until now, there was very little an administrator could economically do about this situation. “Live” training is expensive. However, my new book “Teaching the Large College Class: A Guidebook for Instructors with Multitudes (Jossey-Bass, 2007)” can provide a very cost effective way of providing practical suggestions for faculty new to large class teaching. If bought in bulk, and issued to large-class faculty, it will go a long way toward developing standardized grading practices, and organized lectures.
But if you issue it, will they read it? “Teaching—" is written in an informal, sometimes irreverent, and above all, practical style. It is, as the title suggests, a guidebook, rather than a pedagogical treatise, and offers a wealth of time- (and student) tested practices that will improve teaching, buy more time for instructors, and reduce headaches for administrators. It is available through the usual booksellers, and in quantity through Jossey-Bass.
