Who Are You?
Before launching forth, let me tell you the assumptions I'm going to make about you, the reader. First, I'm going to assume that you are new to teaching large classes, and possibly new to college teaching. There may be a few old futzers like me who will read this, sniff, and say, "Well, that's not how I do it!" but this is basically a beginner's guide. I hope that experienced teachers who browse here will recall that very little is inherently obvious, the first time you do it. Second, I'm assuming that you want to do a good job, and will be willing to spend some time and effort on experiments to fine-tune your course. Finally, I assume that you want to have a life outside the auditorium, and will have a strong interest in tricks and techniques that result in both a good product, and time efficiency.
I'm also going to let you in on a little secret, one you must hide from your colleagues who do not teach big courses. Once the initial terror subsides, if you are a reasonably organized person, it may actually take you less time to teach your 400 students than it does to teach 20 in a Senior level course. It is not intuitively obvious that this is so, so when you are asked to serve on a particularly onerous committee, say the Calendar and Petitions, you can roll your eyes back, shrug helplessly, and say, "Ah, I'd love to, really, but Psych 113--." This works more often than you might think, but don't try to pull it on an old hand at big classes.
There are some other advantages to teaching a megaclass. For starters, you're a celebrity. If you teach a really big course, you'll be known (for good or evil) all over the campus. At graduation time, when you are in the supermarket, young men or women, accompanied by what is obviously their parents, will discretely point at you and whisper something to the folks, undoubtedly worshipful praise. If you become known as a pretty good large class lecturer, it will generally be assumed that you are glib and fast on your feet, so the PR office will send reporters your way if you have even the slightest expertise on something of interest to the newspapers. Unlike colleagues who teach puny classes, you have a shot at getting an ovation at the end of the semester, and as a confirmed ham, I can tell you that is a wonderful sound. But perhaps the best advantage is that if you are both conscientious and good, you know that you're going to have a major, dramatic, and positive influence on hundreds, if not thousands of people. You have a marvelous bully pulpit, and as many of your students are likely to be impressionable freshmen, you can have a powerful influence for good. But before you can have that influence, you have to know what to do with that mass of humanity expectantly waiting for you to speak your first words---.
