Research Question:What are the challenges of teaching large classes and tips for effective teaching large classes?

Challenges of Teaching Large Classes
As the number of students increases, some complex challenges related to teaching and learning processes occur.I want to highlight this issue because it is one of the common situation in public schools.Let's look at some of them which were published by the UNESCO;

• Students become faces instead of people
• Giving individual guidance and advice to students become harder.
• Scheduling for some necessary appointment becomes more challenging.
• Some technical problems can occur.
• Recording attendence becomes harder and as a result of them students were stimulated not to attend class.
• Handling with classroom materials and assignment becomes harder for teacher.
• Less qualified feedbacks for students occurs

As a result of these situations which are caused by large number of students performance of both teacher and the learner will reduce.To prevent this reduction in performance there are some usefull tips to increase effective teaching and learning.

Tips for Teaching Large Classes More Efficiently

1. Make sure that the lecture rewards students for being present.
2. Give more importance to first class while working with large class rather than small class.
3. Use more variable tecniques while teaching.
4. Give more importance to clarity while grading and devising assignments
5. Accomodating diversity should be included.
6. Be more carefull while deciding the tests and exams.
7. More materials that provide two-way communication(such as tests, assignments, etc) should be used.
8. Teaching assistant is needed.
9. Great deal of time and care to run smoothly.
10. Use course websites to promote the communication between teacher and the students.
11. Use online learning communities to promote the communication within the students.

In the light of these informations, having large number of students can be a disadvantage for both teacher and the students.However, it is not a thing that cannot be prevented.Using helpfull tecniques which are based on tips can be very helpful to reduce the negative conseqeuences of working with large number of students in class.


Reference List

1. Iipinge, S. M. (2013). Challenges of large class teaching at the university: implications for continious staff development activities.
2. Michelson, W. (2003). Meeting the challenges of larger classes. Educational Advisory Commitee, 1-8.