Large Enrollment Courses
Large enrollment courses offer opportunities for broad disciplinary impact but often require different pedagogical approaches compared with smaller enrollment courses. Some unique benefits and challenges to creating an inclusive and engaging learning environment include:
- Benefits – broader peer diversity, exposure to varied perspectives, scalable learning environments.
- Challenges – student anonymity, engagement, grading and feedback bandwidth.
Knowing the benefits and challenges highlights the need for intentional course design to effectively engage and assess learners in large enrollment courses.
Tips for Course Design
Intentional course design is critical for student success in large enrollment courses. Adding in more structure into courses can increase transparency, create more space for learning, and support equitable outcomes. We recommend using backward course design, where you first create the goals of the course, then think about appropriate assessments, and lastly design engaging activities to provide students with ample opportunities to practice.
Other key considerations include:
- Clear organization and consistency across the syllabus, course Learning Management System (LMS), and lesson plans. This includes predictable class session structures and transparent policies.
- Transparent learning outcomes that articulate what students should be able to do and how activities and assessments align with those goals.
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, such as offering multiple ways for students to engage with content and demonstrate learning.
- Scaffolded learning activities that break complex tasks into manageable components, helping students build skills over time.
Well-designed large enrollment courses make expectations explicit and reduce unnecessary barriers, allowing students to focus on learning rather than logistics.
For additional classroom support, consider using Teaching Assistants, Learning Assistants, Readers, and LARC Tutors. Taking advantage of these positions can help introduce smaller learning environments into a large enrollment course.
Tips for Engagement
Maintaining student engagement in large enrollment courses requires purposeful planning and the use of active learning strategies that foster interaction and belonging. Be sure your course design allows for interaction.
Effective approaches include:
- Creating a sense of belonging by not just breaking the ice, but keeping the ice broken throughout the course with multiple opportunities for students to get to know and engage with each other. Play some music (maybe a class-generated playlist) to welcome students as they enter the learning environment. Share some stories about your life with the students and/or pose a conversation-promoting question on a slide that students can engage with as they come in. For example, instead of seeing “Class Session #1: [Topic]” on a slide when the students come into the classroom, put up a question like “Is cereal a soup? Justify your answer to a neighbor.”
- Using active learning techniques such as think-pair-share, polling (such as with PollEverywhere), structured discussion prompts, and in-class collaborative exercises. As the students engage with each other, walk around the classroom (and encourage your instructional team – any TAs or LAs – to as well) to eavesdrop on conversations and interact with smaller groups of students. Bonus points to you if you identify one or two students ahead of time who can help explain the answer/concept being discussed to the rest of the class.
- Gathering formative feedback such as through polling or an exit ticket where you can ask students questions such as “What was one thing you learned today?”, “What is one topic or concept you are still unclear about?”, “What, if anything, could you have done differently in class today to better engage with the content and your friends?” This could be collected digitally and themed quickly using AI to quickly get an idea of student responses.
Engagement strategies in large enrollment courses are most effective when they are aligned with course goals and embedded consistently throughout the course materials. Also, a protip: you don’t have to learn everyone’s name. The effort is perceived positively by students and knowing some students’ names gives the impression that you know more about the students than you might feel like you do.
Tips for Assessment
Assessment in large enrollment courses benefits from a strategic mix of formative and summative approaches that support learning while remaining manageable for the instructor.
Consider the following practices:
- Rubrics to clarify expectations and streamline grading while providing meaningful feedback. Some additional tips include creating a comment bank with a number attached to each comment to further expedite grading, or using a grading tool such as GradeScope which provides analytics and the option for team grading.
- Frequent, low-stakes formative assessments such as polling, minute papers, quizzes, reflections, and practice problems to provide feedback and guide student learning. These can be graded or ungraded and are meant to provide feedback to both the instructor and student as to where a student is at in the learning process as opposed to being evaluative.
- Authentic assessments that ask students to apply concepts to real-world or disciplinary contexts. How will problems be presented to students in specific disciplines, and is there a way to infuse them into the classroom to both increase buy in and provide meaningful opportunities for students to engage with the material? For large enrollement courses, we recommend scaffolding and chunking larger assessments and providing students opportunities for collaborative peer review during class sessions.
Thoughtfully designed assessments can promote deeper learning while balancing instructor and teaching team workload.
UC Irvine-Specific Large Enrollment Showcases
Here are a some showcases of instructors at UC Irvine who facilitate large enrollment courses and use engaging learning activities:
- Barbara Sarnecka, Professor, Cognitive Sciences – Psych 9B/PSCI 11B (450 students in the traditional lecture hall 1200 BSIII)
- Adrienne Williams, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Developmental & Cell Biology – BioSci D170 (190 students in a large active learning classroom)
Want More Guidance?
The Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI) partners with instructors and departments to support effective teaching in large enrollment courses.
We offer:
- Individual and team-based consultations on course design, engagement, and assessment.
- Professional development support for implementing active learning and inclusive teaching practices such as through the Active Learning Institute (faculty), Course Design Essentials Program (faculty, staff, graduate students, and postdocs), and the Pedagogical Scholars Program (graduate students).
- Drop-in hours for you to stop by and chat.
- Opportunities to collaborate on department-centered initiatives and professional learning communities.
If you are facilitating or planning on facilitating a large enrollment course, we invite you to connect with us to explore strategies tailored to your context and goals.
Contact
Questions? Please contact Matthew Mahavongtrakul at mmahavon@uci.edu. If you would like to keep in touch and receive email opportunities and additional resources, please fill out this form.
