Rob Harrison
College of Forest Resources
University of Washington, Seattle Campus

Improving Learning in Large Lecture Classes

Rob Harrison, a professor in the School of Forestry, holds the record for the largest lecture at the University of Washington. In Autumn quarter 2001, his Environmental Science class, ESC 110, had 1,004 students enrolled and only five teaching assistants (TAs). This class clearly attracts student interest--it was featured in the UW student newspaper, The Daily in October 2001--and even though the class has an unusually high-enrollment, Harrison routinely receives stellar reviews for ESC 110.

Meeting Popular Demand

ESC 110 started out as a typical, section-based class about soils and land use. Harrison noticed that many of the students were taking it as an environmental science course, and so changed the name and the scope to make it explicitly an introduction to environmental science. It seemed like a lot of students, particularly liberal arts students, needed and wanted a background in environmental science, said Harrison. This seemed like a really good way to give it to them, so I didn't want to have any limits on how many students could take it. Because of this permissive enrollment policy and the general popularity of the class, numbers grew steadily.

Harrison originally planned to have a traditional large class with lectures, sections (taught by TAs), and field trips.

However, the number of students enrolled for the class increased so dramatically that this became impossible. Soon the class enrollment was pushing the limits of the largest available classrooms, so Harrison created an online section. Students in the online section do not attend lecture, but rather download lectures from the course Web site, but they take exams on campus and participate in class projects, just like the students enrolled in the lecture section. By adding this section, Harrison has been able to increase the number of students able to take ESC 110 by more than a third.

Using Technology to Manage a Large Class

So how does Harrison manage such a large class with so few TAs? The course as it is now really started with ITE [the Institute for Teaching Excellence], he claims. At ITE, he began thinking about how to use technology to open the class to as many students as possible. The system he developed both allows students to learn from the class, and helps him keep the course running smoothly.

Harrison terms the course Web page the starting point for the class. It contains all the usual information (for instance, a syllabus) as well as some additional features designed to streamline course administration. One such feature is the frequently asked questions section. Basically, just about any question a student will ask is here, and answered in a lot more detail than we could do on the spur of the moment says Harrison. Students are always free to email us, but probably 90% of the emails we just copy these FAQs back out, and maybe change a word or two. Also online are lectures for distance learners, PowerPoint presentations with a detailed notes section, and exam study help.

Catalyst Tools are also used by the ESC 110 students. EPost and Peer Review are both critical parts of Harrison's class. There are two EPost boards, one for class-related topics, and another for students to sort themselves into groups for the final project. Students post their class projects on Peer Review when they are completed, and then review each other's projects.

Harrison and his TAs rely heavily on Excel spreadsheets for grading. Grades, times of project submission, comments on projects, and exam scores are pasted into separate Excel spreadsheets, which are linked to a master grade sheet. The master sheet contains only each student's name and the numerical grade.

Harrison acknowledges that evaluating students work for content is difficult under these circumstances, but he insists that it is possible. He and the TAs do their best, and have set up an appeal process for students who feel that they've been graded unfairly.

In these cases, what we're trying to do is make the students do the work, and avoid having to do the work ourselves. I know that sounds awful, but it is about the students learning, and I think that any kind of learning is worthwhile. And if it's learning to work within a bureaucratic system and get what you want out of it...then I think that's quite worthwhile. If I had worked completely within the system, this course wouldn't exist.

Problems and Solutions

One of the problems that Harrison has encountered while teaching this course is changing technologies. Running ESC 110 smoothly requires that technology be completely integrated beforehand; one upgrade to a product he relies on means hours of work upgrading all his tools and forms. For Harrison, working the system has often meant convincing lab administrators to keep the software he is using on their computers, or Catalyst staff from phasing out older versions of the Catalyst tools. Despite these problems, however, ESC 110 has run remarkably well, perhaps because of Harrison's dedication to making this course succeed.

Harrison has a number of suggestions for instructors who would like to make their large lectures run more smoothly using technology. First of all, he suggests moving slowly, and adding technology bit by bit. "Make sure you know that the technology's going to work, and avoid being right on the cutting edge of it, because that edge might cut too much." He also says that everything might not work for every class. If it worked with 200, it may or may not work with 400, and I don't know how you test it except to just go ahead. But he also feels that students are very forgiving of an instructor's trial and error. As long as students feel they are ultimately being treated fairly, they're extremely forgiving. You know, you try something, it doesn't work. You just say, look, this doesn't work. We're going to figure out something else, I'm sorry.' Honesty is always the best policy with students."

Please note: EPost has been replaced by GoPost, which offers expanded features to support online discussion and collaboration.