Keeping everyone engaged: The challenges and opportunities of large group teaching

Despite the emergence of many new teaching and learning modes and tools, large group lectures remain a central and pervasive part of students’ formal learning experiences in higher education. In particular, first-year classes tend in most universities to be very large. Despite smaller group interactions in tutorial and other settings, often these large arenas are where learners are exposed to the core curriculum. Many critics have called for an end to large classes of this nature, saying that they are outdated, 19th-century forums for learning and that they are inappropriately applied in current settings, where information can be accessed through a much wider and arguably much more engaging range of media. In the words of Cooper and Robinson (2000, p. 7), who have been among the many critics of the large lecture experience: “It is a sad commentary on our universities that the least engaging class sizes and the least involving pedagogy are foisted upon the students at the most pivotal time of their undergraduate careers: when they are beginning college.”