Handling Very Large Lecture Courses: Keeping the Wheels on the Bus III (Abstract Only)

Abstract

As classes grow beyond hundreds or even a thousand students, instructors must come to grapple with handling course logistics at scale. Otherwise mundane tasks can no longer be handled in an ad hoc way, and standard course design challenges become more acute. Just to name a few issues, the instructor might have to contend with: Providing timely effective feedback to students, exam scheduling, recruiting and managing a teaching staff that consists of dozens of people, ensuring consistency of grading, identifying and providing interventions for struggling students, providing a consistent policy for makeup work, and creating many types of course content (e.g. lab, HW, discussion section) that allows for an efficient path to mastery for each student regardless of diverse backgrounds and ability. If you have good ideas for handling these issues you'd like to share, or just want to learn what others are doing, come join us! Discussion will ideally include staffing techniques, technologies (including automated assessments), and ways of developing course content. A master list of such tips, as well as a retrospective summary, will be compiled and provided to the SIGCSE community at http://tinyurl.com/wotb2017.