Audience
Freshmen entering a large classroom on the first day of classes come into the room with certain expectations based on their experiences in an auditorium in high school. What happens in a high school auditorium? Regular classes? No. Special events. Rallies. Celebrity visits. Behavior lessons disguised as entertainment (anti-drinking and drug campaigns). So when those students come into your class on the first day, look around and see that they are in an auditorium, what are they going to expect will happen? Something fun, interesting, stimulating, unusual, and above all, something that doesn't involve work. Now you walk in and tell them that they're going to have to come to lecture every single day, study three hours a night, and if they don't read until their eyeballs bleed, they're going to end up with permanent jobs in in the fast food industry. Big conflict. This is one of the reasons why instructors may unknowingly start off on the wrong foot with a big, first-year class. By recognizing that their expectations are different than yours, and taking the time to explain to students that this particular large room is a place of business, rather than a pep rally, you will help them adapt to the new reality. An audience watching a play has an entirely different experience than a viewer watching the same production on TV by himself, or with one or two other people. There is an indefinable electricity that makes being part of a crowd a value-added experience. Watching a concert on TV is not the same as being there. Because most of your students will have had this exciting crowd experience, you can capitalize on that background to turn the class into a dynamic learning environment. Should you choose to be, you can be more dramatic, flamboyant, and yes, even eccentric than you might in a small class situation, and have this behavior be perceived as "normal" because the students are in a theater---.
