Student engagement in very large classes: the teachers’ perspective

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Student engagement in very largeclasses: the teachers’ perspectiveDaniel J. Exeter a , Shanthi Ameratunga a , Matiu Ratima b , SusanMorton a , Martin Dickson a , Dennis Hsu a & Rod Jackson aa Epidemiology & Biostatistics, School of Population Health ,University of Auckland , Auckland, New Zealandb Centre for Academic Development , University of Auckland ,Auckland, New ZealandPublished online: 09 Oct 2010.

To cite this article: Daniel J. Exeter , Shanthi Ameratunga , Matiu Ratima , Susan Morton , MartinDickson , Dennis Hsu & Rod Jackson (2010) Student engagement in very large classes: the teachers’perspective, Studies in Higher Education, 35:7, 761-775, DOI: 10.1080/03075070903545058

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Studies in Higher EducationVol. 35, No. 7, November 2010, 761–775

ISSN 0307-5079 print/ISSN 1470-174X online© 2010 Society for Research into Higher EducationDOI: 10.1080/03075070903545058http://www.informaworld.com

Student engagement in very large classes: the teachers’ perspective

Daniel J. Exetera*, Shanthi Ameratungaa, Matiu Ratimab, Susan Mortona, Martin Dicksona, Dennis Hsua and Rod Jacksona

aEpidemiology & Biostatistics, School of Population Health, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand; bCentre for Academic Development, University of Auckland, Auckland, New ZealandTaylor and FrancisCSHE_A_454969.sgm10.1080/03075070903545058Studies in Higher Education0307-5079 (print)/1470-174X (online)Original Article2010Society for Research into Higher Education00000000002010Dr. [email protected]

The rapid growth in the student population observed in higher education over thepast 10–15 years in some countries has coincided with an increased recognition ofstudent engagement and its value in developing knowledge. Active learningapproaches have the potential to promote student engagement with lectures, butthis becomes more challenging as class sizes increase. This study investigatesstudent engagement from the teachers’ perspective, to identify current practices inteaching, learning and assessment designed to promote student engagement incourses with more than 1000 students enrolled at the University of Auckland, NewZealand. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with six coursecoordinators. The results demonstrate that teaching techniques commonlyassociated with small-class teaching can be used to engage students in very largeclasses. The effectiveness of these approaches from the students’ perspectiveswarrants further investigation.

Keywords: student engagement; undergraduate; teaching styles; first-yearstudents; learner-centred environment

Introduction

Teaching very large classes effectively requires the same skills and commitment asteaching smaller classes, such as the need to motivate students, being systematic,organised and developing stimulating assessment tasks. These requirements becomeincreasingly difficult with large classes, as expanding student numbers are often accom-panied by increasing diversity of the student population, and greater demands andcomplexities in the processes of teaching and assessment (Teaching and DevelopmentInstitute 2002). A particular challenge that teachers of very large classes face is ensuringthat students enrolled in their course are engaged with the course content. Previousauthors have promoted several approaches to enhancing student engagement, includingthe use of active learning methods (Clark et al. 2008; McGroarty et al. 2004; Teixeira-Dias et al. 2005), tying assessment to course content (Biggs 2003), or by using noveltechnologies that encourage students’ interaction with the context and process of learn-ing (Martinez-Torres et al. 2007; Poirier and Feldman 2007; Scornavacca, Huff, andMarshall 2007; Sitthiworachart and Joy 2008). However, many of these studies considera ‘large class’ to comprise only between 150 and 300 students (Nicol and Boyle 2003;Ratcliffe, Woodbury, and Thomas 2002; Russell 2007; Yang 2008).

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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762 D.J. Exeter et al.

There has been a significant increase in the student population enrolled in under-graduate programmes at universities over the past 10–15 years in New Zealand andother countries. For example, the student population at the University of Auckland hasincreased from 13,000 in 1986 to over 40,000 in 2008 (University of Auckland 2008).Furthermore, over 30 first-year courses exceeded 500 students in 2007, of which 10had student enrolments well in excess of 1000. While many first-year graduate-levelcourses in statistics, biology, psychology, law and accounting have a long history ofattracting a large number of students, similar growth in our introductory-levelPopulation Health course has occurred in a relatively short period.

With such large classes, it seems plausible that there would be limited interactionbetween students and lecturers in the classroom, a high degree of student anonymity,and a course dominated by didactic teaching (Ward and Jenkins 1992). All of thesecharacteristics have the potential to result in a course with low levels of student moti-vation and satisfaction. Yet, many recipients of national teaching excellence awardsin New Zealand are involved in teaching very large classes (Ako Aotearoa 2009),suggesting that innovative, engaging teaching and learning can be experienced in verylarge classes.

Our Population Health course has experienced significant growth over the pastfive years, but to date we have typically used a didactic teaching approach. In 2007,we noticed that some students were not engaging with the course content. Thereforethe principal research question for this study is How can student engagement beachieved in very large classes? Particular emphasis is placed on the teachingtechniques used in the lecture theatre, the organisation of teaching for the course,opportunities for learning outside the classroom and assessment. These questions wereexplored in semi-structured interviews with six course coordinators of very largeclasses in a diverse range of disciplines across the University of Auckland. This studywas funded through a Teaching Improvement Grant (TIG) entitled ‘Teaching Largeand Diverse Classes’, which aimed to evaluate and identify exemplars of currentteaching, learning and assessment techniques in very large classes at the University ofAuckland. The purpose was to identify tools and techniques used by teachers in verylarge classes in order to engage their students.

Student engagement

In its broadest sense, student engagement refers to the time, energy and resourcesspent on activities designed to enhance learning at university. Krause (2007) identifiedthree environments in which students may become engaged with their learning: in theclassroom or conducting study-related activities; participation in out-of-class activi-ties located either on campus (e.g. student clubs, sports, mentoring programmes) or offcampus (e.g. paid part-time employment); or in the workplace (i.e. skill-basedemployment training). The focus in this study, however, is on engaging students in theclassroom, or through study-related activities. In this context, student engagement ismore synonymous with Marton and Säljö’s (1976) notion of surface or deepapproaches to learning. The ‘engaged’ student is one who is a ‘deep’ learner, seekingto develop his/her knowledge, reflecting on the facts and details presented in thelecture related to their own experiences and ‘the big picture’. This requires a high levelof engagement, achieved by developing theories, applying knowledge to differentcontexts, relating concepts to everyday behaviours and explaining in detail contentdelivered by the teacher (Biggs 1999). By contrast, the disengaged student typically

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Studies in Higher Education 763

takes notes during the lecture and memorises facts and key points in order to obtain a‘pass’ for the course (Biggs 1999; Marton and Säljö 1976).

Developing a course curriculum that engages students requires a shift away fromthe lecture-based delivery model to a more interactive and student-centred mode ofteaching. A conventional, teacher-centred course might involve the transmission ofconcepts required for the syllabus, or the transmission of knowledge from the lecturer,with few opportunities for student interaction and little regard for students’ existingknowledge of a topic. However, an engaging curriculum would focus on the students’understanding of the subject matter with a vision to help the students develop thoseviews (Prosser and Trigwell 1999). Thus, curricula designed upon the foundations ofactive and problem based learning are examples of courses designed to engagestudents, and are relatively easy to implement in small classes (MacGregor et al.2000).

Research context and questions

We are based in the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland, andteach a Population Health course introducing the principles of epidemiology to approx-imately 900 first-year students enrolled in biomedical science (45%), health science(36%), nursing (11%) and pharmacy (9%) programmes, with a small proportion (< 1%)enrolled in other programmes. Our aim is to provide students with a population-basedapproach to understanding health and disease. Whereas a clinical approach to healthis focused on the presence/absence of disease in an individual patient, our students aretaught that the physical, social, cultural and political environment in which populationslive has been demonstrated to influence health outcomes. Initially, the course wastaught to approximately 70 first-year medical students, but since 2000 has experiencedan annual growth of approximately 100 students.

Although there have been minor modifications to the lecture content taught eachyear, the overall structure of the course and course materials have remained relativelyunchanged since the course comprised fewer than 100 students. There are 36 lecturesper 12-week semester (three 50-minute lectures a week). Since 2005, when the classfirst exceeded 700 students, the course has been taught in one stream using the Univer-sity’s ‘overflow’ system, which simulcasts the lecturer and his/her lecture materials(e.g. PowerPoint slides, video clips, transparencies) from the main lecture theatre totwo adjacent lecture theatres. There are four interactive tutorials known as workshops,which engage students in smaller groups of approximately 40 students per class, anddo not contribute to coursework credit. However, all content covered in the workshopsmay be examined in either the mid-term tests or final examination.

The requirements for entry to the programmes that participate in our PopulationHealth course vary substantially, from a rank score of 180 for the nursing programmeto 230 for students enrolled in biomedical science. Therefore it is not surprising thatthe cohort of students represents a diverse range of academic abilities and learningstyles. In addition, many students enrolled in health science or biomedical scienceprogrammes are attempting to obtain the academic criteria required to be consideredfor the University’s Bachelor of Medicine & Bachelor of Surgery programme, makingthis course highly competitive. This diverse range of educational and cultural back-grounds has implications for student engagement.

This study was prompted in early 2007, when the lead author observed particularlydisengaged students in the overflow room, rather than being ‘on task’. In contrast to

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students making comments related to each slide in the course book, an alarmingnumber of students appeared not to engage with the content, choosing instead tocolour-in entire pages of the course book (i.e. graffiti, doodle-art), study for othercourses, or search the Internet on their laptop. Even though the students received thekey slides from the lecture in the course book, the format of the pages did not allowadequate room for the students to make notes related to the slides. This apparentbarrier to engagement exacerbated the already low levels of engagement in the over-flow rooms, that do not allow students to interact directly with the teacher. Given thisinert lecture experience in the overflow room, some may find it surprising that somany students continue to attend the classes.

While there are examples of active learning interventions in large classes, thesestudies typically consider a ‘large class’ to comprise between 100 and 500 students(Clark et al. 2008; Jenkins 1992; Johnson 1992; Smith 2000). However, in the contextof the present study, these would be considered relatively small classes, as enrolmentsin 2007 exceeded 1000 students for many courses. According to the literature, engag-ing students in the classroom involves two actors: the teacher of a course, who mustprovide a course which engages students’ attention, and the students, who must alsoengage with that course content (McGroarty et al. 2004), although this becomes morecomplex as the class size increases. While an entertaining lecture is more likely toattract the students’ attention, engagement involves providing tasks during the lectureto deepen the understanding of concepts presented by the teacher. This study focuseson the relationship between the two actors to answer the question: ‘how is studentengagement achieved in very large classes?’ In particular, what teaching techniquescan be used effectively in the lecture theatre, how might courses be organised toengage students, what opportunities for learning outside the classroom and whatassessment mechanisms are used to engage the students?

In our Population Health course, each student is provided with a course book thatcontains a summary, three or four learning outcomes and references to the key read-ing(s) for each lecture. In addition, there are 12–18 ‘key’ slides for each lectureincluded in the course book, which are considered to be the foundations for revision.At present, course assessment is in the form of two multiple-choice question (MCQ)tests (15% and 25% respectively) and a final examination (60%) comprising MCQsand short-answer questions. Other forms of in-course assessment used in earlier yearshave included essays and worksheet-based assignments, but, due to the competitivenature of this course, MCQs have been used as the main assessment tool since 2005.They are considered to be more objective, to ensure consistency of marking and tooffer a quick turnaround in marking time for students. Critics of MCQ tests contendthat this form of assessment promotes surface learning, tests trivia and fails to examinehigher cognitive process and understanding of concepts (Ferland, Dorval, and Levas-seur 1987; Johnstone and Ambusaidi 2000). However, the essays and worksheets usedfor assessment in previous years meant that students had to wait longer to receivefeedback from staff, and the assessment of assignments was considered more subjec-tive, which led to students questioning their grades after discussing their reports withtheir peers.

Student attendance in the main lecture theatre is on a first-in first-seated basis and,although the simulcast approach enables the teacher to deliver his/her material to theentire class at one time, there are some (potential) disadvantages from the student’sperspective. First, students in the overflow rooms cannot ask the teacher questions orinteract with other students in the main lecture theatre. Second, the teachers are not

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able to move around the classroom during the lecture, because the fixed camera isfocused on the lectern and its immediate proximity. Third, very few questions areraised by students in the main lecture theatre, perhaps due to the sheer size of the class;and the teacher must reiterate any questions raised in order to include students in theoverflow theatres. Fourth, supervision is required in each of the overflow rooms toensure that students in these rooms are on task and are not disruptive to their peers.

Methods

We define ‘very large classes’ as any first-year course for which 550 or more studentshad enrolled during 2007. This threshold was selected because much of the evidencefor active learning/student engagement/interaction in large classes is based on casestudies with classes comprising between 150 and 500 students. Furthermore, two newlecture theatres, each with a capacity of 576 students, opened in 2007, the largestlecture theatres in our university. Both lecture theatres have been configured to runeither as stand-alone lecture theatres or using the overflow system. In order to improvethe learning experience of our students, it was necessary to examine the practice ofother courses that implement the overflow system as well as those courses that dividetheir classes into smaller streams.

Of the 33 courses at the University of Auckland that attracted 550 or more enrol-ments in 2007, there were 10 courses with more than 1000 students dispersed acrossthe University. Only five of the ten used the overflow system for teaching, and therewas no apparent correlation of this decision with other characteristics of the course,such as faculty or content. The majority of the other large classes apportioned theirstudents into two or three streams, and one of the large accounting courses had ninestreams of students in 2007.

In order to obtain an understanding of a broad cross-section of current teaching,learning and assessment among very large classes, 10 first-year undergraduate coursesfrom the faculties of Commerce, Law, Medical & Health Sciences and Science wereinvited to participate in the study. Potential participants (course coordinators) weresent a brief outline of the project and an invitation to take part in an interview that wasexpected to last approximately one hour. Six of the ten potential participants agreedto the interview (one of whom was the lead author, and the course coordinator of thePopulation Health course), at which point they were invited to send a copy of theircourse books and/or other learning materials to the lead author for comparative docu-ment analyses. They were then interviewed by the research assistant, who conductedall of the interviews.

We teach the entire Population Heath class in one stream using the overflowsystem. The other large course from the Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences usedthe overflow system for its two streams. None of the other four courses in this studyadopted this approach. Students enrolled in those courses were divided into streamscomprising between 140 and 550 students and taught in separate lectures.

A guideline for the semi-structured interviews was developed and comprised threeparts. The introductory section provided background information about both theparticipant and the course with which they were associated. Next, the participant wasinvited to provide examples of how student engagement had been incorporated intotheir curriculum. Guiding questions centred on the course organisation, learningmaterials, lectures and tutorials, assessment and their thoughts on technology (e.g.CECIL – the University’s online learning management system, online tests, etc.) used

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in the course. The concluding section gave the participant the opportunity to commenton his/her use of student engagement in very large classes that had not been coveredduring the interview. The overall purpose of these interviews was to discuss thebroad domains of teaching, learning and assessment of large first-year courses at theUniversity. These broad domains included the administration of the course, coursecontent, classroom behaviour and management, assessment mechanisms, catering to adiversity of students and student-centred learning techniques.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted between December 2007 and March2008, each of which lasted approximately 60 minutes. Audio recordings of the inter-views were transcribed and manually coded using thematic analysis. Each transcriptwas printed and themes were identified using the general inductive approach (Thomas2006). Thematic analysis is a form of qualitative data analysis used to identify, anal-yse and report trends (or themes) inherent in one’s data (Braun and Clarke 2006).Themes are used to identify data extracts that represent particular aspects of theresearch question(s), categorised into meaningful groups for further analysis. Ethicalapproval for this study was obtained from the University of Auckland Human Partic-ipants Ethics Committee (Ref#: 2007/396).

Results

Seven major aspects of teaching, learning and assessment in higher education wereidentified (see Table 1). Engagement, the principal focus of the research, was one ofthe themes drawn out from the transcripts. However, the interviews covered manyaspects of teaching and learning, some more related to student engagement thanothers. In the thematic analysis, student engagement was identified as being directlyrelevant for the themes of course management, engagement, learning materials andstudent assessment. These are discussed below.

As Table 1 suggests, the interviews with course coordinators provided detaileddata about the teaching and learning processes that provide challenges to teachers ofsuch large classes. The data were examined to understand how each of the abovethemes impact on student engagement, because each theme does not, or rather shouldnot, work in isolation of other processes.

Whereas our Population Health course has been taught for around 10 years, andthe lead author has been teaching on this course for two years, each of the five course

Table 1. Themes developed from transcripts.

Themes Example sub-themes

Course management Administrative information, marking, class sizes, streams, tutors, supervision in (overflow) lectures and examination marking

Engagement Student–lecturer interaction, encouragement, motivation, online learning

Lecturers Number of lecturers, experienceLearning materials Lecture materials, course books, tutorials, learning outcomes, CECILStudent assessment Methods of assessment, MCQ, short answers, CECIL testsSkills Skills expected before, during and on completion of course, University

Graduate ProfileDiversity Culture, learning abilities, student diversity

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coordinators interviewed for the study had been involved in their course (or its prede-cessor) for between 19 and 33 years. Two of the participants interviewed in this studyrecently won Teaching Excellence Awards. All of the courses have attracted largestudent numbers for many years, although the recent introduction of General Educa-tion courses has contributed to an increased student population for two of the coursesin the study. One course in the Science Faculty, for example, has seen the roll increaseslightly from approximately 900 to 1050, while another from the Law Faculty swelledfrom 600 in 2007 to 1600 students in 2008.

The role of course management in developing engagement

While all six of the courses in this study were taught by a team of teachers, there weresome subtle differences in their organisation. For example, the two courses from theFaculty of Medical & Health Sciences and one of the Faculty of Science courses havea modular approach to teaching, where each lecturer is responsible for one or more‘blocks’ of teaching. One advantage of the modular approach to teaching is thatstudents have the opportunity to learn from a group of experts within a discipline.However, the potential to build any sense of staff/student relationship is limited,particularly when some modules comprise only three lectures. One participant had amore pragmatic interpretation of the modular approach. After accepting that teamteaching does run the risk of becoming fragmented, which would surely disengagestudents, he said:

The advantage of having different lecturers is that, if any one of us is not such a greatteacher, then at least the students don’t have to suffer them for too long. So, the studentscan think ‘Oh well this guy isn’t great. I can see there’s only another three lectures, andI can stand that’. (FMHS2)

By contrast, three of the courses assign one lecturer to one stream who teaches theentire course content to that stream. There are a number of advantages in thisapproach, for the student and the lecturer, as the coordinator for the commerce coursestates:

It makes staff au fait with the whole course and it also gives you that lead-in to later inthe course to tie back with what you’ve done earlier in the course. (FoC)

In each of these three courses, the teachers of each stream are provided with exactlythe same content, but they are able to make minor modifications such as rearrangingthe order of the PowerPoint presentation or adding in different examples. In thecommerce course, this seems to work well:

[One advantage of using the] same material, is that people are actually emphasising simi-lar things. We’ve done a lot of work in doing this set of overheads and basically staffknow to try and compensate for that one. (FoC)

Engaging the students in the classroom

Many different techniques were used to engage the first-year students enrolled in thecourses under investigation in this study, including classroom discussions and tasks tobe completed individually or in small groups. When prompted about techniques used

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to motivate the diverse students in his course, one participant suggested that the coursewas naturally interesting, simply because of the content taught:

One of the things about the topics I teach is that, I mean I think they are kind of intrin-sically interesting in a way. So one of the main topics I teach about is memory and I sortof just see if anybody’s interested in it. (FoS1)

One might assume that this reply would be expected from all of the participants inter-viewed, given their experience in administering the course and their obvious enthusi-asm for their discipline. This particular participant continued discussing this point andstated that to engage his students he does:

Try to make sure that you can relate everything … I mean it’s not too hard to relatethings … to real examples when you talk about things like that [memory]. (FoS1)

Furthermore, he acknowledged that he is probably better at contextualising his disci-pline to real examples than he was 15 years ago, but it was difficult to articulate whathe was doing differently.

The Law course had the largest student roll in the study, with each of the ninestreams having a class size of approximately 270 students, which was consideredmanageable for the lecturers, and particularly suited one participant because hepreferred to engage the students in discussions for 15–20 minutes per lecture. Divid-ing the class into small groups for discussion acknowledges that students’ attentionspans are typically 15–20 minutes, and therefore the change in focus created bydiscussions refreshes the students and increases the likelihood of student engagement(e.g. Johnstone and Percival 1976; Middendorf and Kalish 1995). For the Law course,a small-group discussion was a regular activity in the large class; for example:

[One group is told to] enforce the apartheid laws in South Africa, and the next group aretold to bomb Dresden … so they then just chat amongst themselves for 10 minutes …and come back and have a whole class discussion. (FoL)

A number of participants, who had taught one stream for the duration of a course,described how a ‘more integrated feel for the students’ (FoS2) was achieved by allow-ing students to ask questions, or by conducting experiments in the class and gettingfeedback from the students upon completion of the exercise:

Okay, I’ll give you one example of something to do. In the lecture workbook there is apage with 60 circles, and we imagine that it’s a population of circles, and we get thestudents to do two different types of samples of size 5, so we get them to … pick asample of size 5 that they think is representative of the population … and they calcu-late the sample mean diameter of those, and then we show them how to use randomnumbers, and use them to randomly generate a selection of 5 from this population.(FoS2)

This particular example is an exercise that students complete on their own, but theycan ask their neighbours if they get stuck. The above examples demonstrate thatsuccessful engagement of students can be achieved using a number of active learningstrategies such as the use of short tasks for individual or small groups, or voting onissues. The key is to ensure that the lecture material is related to environments withwhich students are familiar. A fundamental barrier to adopting these approaches in an

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overflow environment is that feedback sought from students following an in-classactivity can only be obtained from the ‘main’ class in which the teacher is located.Students often need encouragement and/or discussion with the teacher in order tocomplete the task, and the absence of this support in the overflow lecture theatres is akey factor in disengaging students. Nevertheless, the authors recognise that teacherscan still potentially engage students located in overflow rooms through structuredengagement-style activities, such as spot-quizzes or MCQ tests. Recent advances inmobile phone technology have enabled the development of short message service orSMS-based learning, in which students reply to a MCQ posed by the teacher by send-ing a text message from their mobile phone and results are displayed at the front ofthe room immediately (Scornavacca, Huff, and Marshall 2007).

Reducing large classes into smaller groups by streaming appears to be effective,but this may not always be possible or efficient. The development of streams increasesthe resources required to teach a course, which are not always available. This structuremay also be met with resistance by the teaching staff. Our Population Health courseis the only course based in the School of Population Health that attracts more than 500students, and the only undergraduate course taught by the members of the Epidemiol-ogy & Biostatistics Department. Teaching our course in two or three streams is notpossible, given the current research commitments of the teaching staff. The othercourse based in the Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences is taught in two streams,one of which adopts the overflow system, to avoid the need for a third stream. Tosome extent, that course faced a similar problem to ours, whereby limited resourcesincreased the burden on the course lecturers, many of whom are internationally recog-nised researchers in their subject and who appear as ‘guest’ lectures on the course.Past experience in teaching three streams per day also served as encouragement to usethe overflow system, as the participant comments:

Yeah, I have lectured three times, many years ago, and I found that I couldn’t keepmotivated and spontaneous for the third lecture, it was just a bridge too far. The firstlecture, I’m kind of keyed up, because I’m wondering how it’s gonna go, it’s a yearsince I did it, I hope it’s gonna go okay. The second lecture, I’m much more relaxed,because I know it went okay in the morning, but because I’m relaxed, I’m feeling quitegood about it, that’s okay, the third lecture I’m getting tired and bored, and there’s nocompensating excitement or relaxation or anything, do you know what I mean?(FMHS2)

When the overflow environment is used, engaging students through the use of themore conventional approaches described above becomes more difficult, especiallywhen more than 40% of the class are not in the same lecture theatre as the teacher. Inour Population Health course we try to mitigate this problem using two approaches:by providing the students with the 12–18 ‘key’ PowerPoint slides for each lecture inthe course book, and by endeavouring to compartmentalise the delivery of the lectureinto sections of 15–20 minutes’ duration (Gibbs and Jenkins 1984; Hartley and Davies1978; Wilson and Korn 2007), using a range of media to emphasise the main conceptsof a given topic in a way that (we intend) will engage the students. In an attempt tobetter engage the students, slides were provided three to a page, with space for note-taking in 2008. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the result of this change was thatstudents started taking more notes themselves.

The coordinator for the other course using the overflow system expressed hisrepulsion for PowerPoint, claiming that:

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PowerPoint lies behind the worst teaching that we have at this University … [it] encour-ages you to … go way too fast and jam way too much content into each lecture, and then‘pip’ there’s a slide, two minutes extemporising on the slide, ‘pip’ there’s the next one.(FMHS2)

Indeed, this participant uses PowerPoint simply as a slide projector in his lectures andadopts a policy that any material on the PowerPoint is purely illustrative and notexaminable, a policy that encourages students to put down their pens and engage indiscussion related to the particular slide. The alternative to PowerPoint in this case isa course book in which the content for each lecture is designed as a separate ‘work-sheet’, comprising notes, diagrams, charts and other elements that the lecturer andstudents work through together. For example:

They’ve got their course book and everything they need to know in condensed form ishere in the note and … we’ll either colour in diagrams, or we’ll label them, [place] labelson diagrams, or we’ll complete them, sometimes we give them dotted outlines and Icomplete them, like sort of connecting the dots. Or … here [shows interviewer page]we’re talking about a case, heart disease, and here they already know about normal bloodpressures in the heart, and so here’s three different pressure curves, and I’ll say, ‘Okay,in this particular disease, which of these three curves do you think we’d obtain?’ Andthey have to discuss it with their neighbour for a few minutes, and then I ask for a vote.(FMHS2)

In the abovementioned course, more than 40% of the students may be in an overflowtheatre, thus this approach provides an example of interaction in the classroom whichactively promotes student engagement. The teachers are working through exactly thesame content that the students have in their course book, which allows the students tosee the logical progression of a teaching session. The students are guided by theteacher’s behaviour, colouring in diagrams, completing labels, or joining dots in astructured manner, following the teacher’s cues. Therefore, while the teacher is ableto gauge the pace of the lecture (i.e. by seeing from the lectern how many studentshave completed a particular task), arguably much better than a conventional Power-Point-based approach (in which teachers are static, but the students are note-taking),the active learning foundations, upon which the course book was designed, aim tomaximise the potential for students to become engaged in the course content.However, there is a risk that either the students are being perceived by staff as chil-dren, or that the activities are too simple for some students and they disengage in thecourse. Indeed, the coordinator agrees:

The students all do it as I do it, it’s like kindergarten … And students say that they likeit, and at the end of it there, I’ve coloured in mine, they’ve coloured, they all know that‘Yes, I’ve got it all down’. (FMHS2)

Constructivist teaching techniques such as this are most useful when the teacher isable to move back and forth from simplifying concepts to intellectually stimulatingand challenging the more advanced students in the class (Biggs 1996).

Engaging the students outside the classroom

The courses investigated are either compulsory courses for at least one degreeprogramme or are ‘filter’ courses that attract a large number of students (wanting to

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enter the Law programme, for example). In this environment, one could perceive‘motivation’ or ‘encouragement’ to be synonymous with ‘engagement’. Not surpris-ingly, including a particular learning tool such as an online test or attendance at a tuto-rial as a part of the in-course assessment was a major motivator. For example, in theFaculty of Commerce regular online-quizzes were part of the assessment because:

that was a carrot to get them to do it each week, because you’re very conscious of thefact that unless they do their course work … throughout the semester they don’t suddenlycome right in the final exam. (FoC)

Similarly, one of the coordinators from the Faculty of Medical & Health Sciencesspoke about how the students engage in the laboratory exercises with around 64students per lab stream, because each laboratory counts towards their final mark:

Oh, they like the labs, they’re good labs. I mean, they’re interesting, they get blood ontheir hands, they’d always tend to always report enthusiastically about the labs, and theirclassmates tell them you know, to come, and of course they have to get six out of thetwelve marks. (FMHS2)

In one of the courses in the Faculty of Science, the coordinators make a concertedeffort to provide the students with many opportunities to engage with the coursecontent beyond the classroom. In addition to a well-organised course book thatincluded lecture material, exercises and tutorial handouts, the students were providedwith a CD-ROM containing exercises, guides to using software used in the course, andprevious tests and examinations.

Most of the study participants recognised that the students in their courses werevery diverse culturally, socially and academically. However, different coursesmanaged this diversity differently. Generally, each course was designed to stimulateand extend excellent students, while making the content comprehensible and possiblefor the weaker student to succeed. Three courses assumed that students had no priorknowledge of the subject, even though a proportion of students in two courses wouldhave done the subject at secondary school. In both cases, there was some revision ofprinciples taught at secondary level, but the coordinators stressed that:

the approach is much more interpretative and less reliant on formulas and rules. (FOS2)

One response to the diversity of students in one course was to record the lecture mate-rials and the delivered lecture for distribution to the students via CECIL. This is aparticularly useful resource for students who have legitimately missed a class, thosethat may be struggling with the course, or for students whose first language is notEnglish (which is relatively common in this multicultural university). Of course,students who choose not to attend the lectures can also access these resources as partof their examination preparation. The coordinator strengthens the justification formaking the recordings available:

I think rehearing something they [the students] thought was said this way, or they didn’tquite catch is beneficial. I don’t think it’s a replacement for anything else, it’s just anadd-on, it’s a plus, it’s a bonus. (FoS2)

However, the enthusiasm for providing recorded lectures was not universal, as oneparticipant described:

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I’m not going to give them some half-pie recorded version that they can sit at home andwatch and not come to my lecture. (FMHS2)

Conclusion

Given that each of the course coordinators involved in this study teaches in excess of850 students per semester, one might expect that the conventional, didactic lecturewas the ‘default’ approach to teaching these classes. However, this study demonstratesthat this was not the case. Rather, techniques commonly used in small classes, such asproblem-based learning, small-group discussions and strategies that enabled studentsto ask questions frequently were used in very large classes to engage students. Byusing an array of teaching approaches, including individual or small-group basedactivities, in-class discussions and a well-structured course book, the teachers inter-viewed in this study sought to optimise opportunities for student engagement.

A large body of evidence supports the notion that student-centred teachingincreases engagement (Biggs 2003; Dyson 2008; Gibbs and Coffey 2004; Kember2009; Krause 2007; Kuh 2005; Leese 2009; Nair, Adams, and Mertova 2008;Robinson and Hullinger 2008). The participants in this study described approachesconsistent with the second student-focused strategy described by Prosser and Trigwell(1999), in which the teaching focuses on the students’ views of the subject matter andaims to develop their conceptions further, rather than concentrating exclusively on theteacher’s own perceptions of the content. The pedagogical attributes of these partici-pants are consistent with the six principles of good teaching identified by Ramsden(2003): a high level of interest in and explanation of their discipline; concern andrespect for students and student learning; using appropriate assessment and feedback;providing clear goals and intellectual challenge to the students; promoting indepen-dence, control and active engagement in the classroom; and a willingness to learnfrom students taking their course. All the coordinators in this study are creativeteachers who use a ‘less is more’ philosophy, whereby a small amount of content isdelivered such that the students can deepen their knowledge of concepts (Brookfield2006).

Our study participants were very experienced coordinators of large first-yearcourses and their combined experiences may give the impression that teaching a classof 1000 students is comparable to teaching 10 students. However, teachers of largeclasses will have to contend with a number of problems or barriers not commonlyassociated with smaller groups, including: fewer opportunities to establish a rapportwith the students; additional organisational difficulties (finding effective tutors, roomavailability for many tutorials, etc.); appropriate teaching and assessment methods;and the increased stress associated with ‘performing’ to large classes (Ward andJenkins 1992).

The results of this study led to changes to our Population Health course this year.First, we removed all slides from the course book and made the ‘key’ slides availablethe evening before each lecture, with space beside each slide for further note-taking.Second, we included in-class quizzes and small-group exercises in lectures, in anattempt to deepen the students’ learning. Finally, we introduced an automated feed-back system that followed the standard MCQ assessments in the course. Theseprovided each student with an email outlining the concepts that each questionassessed, their performance for each question and the performance of the class overall.This system was designed to maximise feedback opportunities while maintaining the

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integrity and confidentiality of our question bank. We will continue redeveloping ourlectures to be more interactive and student-centred, and are currently exploring oppor-tunities to use supervisors in overflow rooms as facilitators of group discussions andactivities during the teaching session.

Engaging students in very large classes involves two actors: the teacher, who mustprovide a course which engages their students’ attention, and the students, who mustengage with the course content (McGroarty et al. 2004). This article has focused onthe teacher’s perspective, and demonstrates the strategies that a motivated group ofteachers have used to engage students during the teaching session to deepen theirunderstanding of concepts. While the benefits of these approaches over didactic,potentially passive lectures may be self-evident, the extent to which these enrich thelearning process in the environment of very large classes requires further investiga-tion, specifically from the students’ perspective.

AcknowledgementThis project was made possible by a University of Auckland Teaching Improvement Grant.The authors would like to thank all of the participants involved in this study.

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Documents

Student engagement in very large classes: the teachers’ perspective