Managing a large enrollment course requires creativity, hard work and sometimes help from the technology experts. Dr. Samuel Richards, senior lecturer in sociology, discovered this when his course, SOC 119: Race and Ethnic Relations, suddenly doubled in size. Currently, about 480 students enroll in the course. Forty teaching assistants are required to head class discussion sections and assist with lectures, including one person who runs the technology podium during class.
Richards explains that "with 250 people, I can walk into a
classroom and not use PowerPoint, not use overheads, not use notes, and not even use
a microphone, and I can keep them really engaged, just talking.
I can have conversations back and forth. But with 500 people, it's really difficult. So we
needed some assistance keeping people engaged."
In fall 2001, Richards turned to the Faculty Technology Initiative program offered by Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) to help him employ technology to help engage students and manage the logistics of this large class. TLT helped in several capacities.
Richards frequently shows two- to five-minute video clips during his carefully scripted class lectures, in tandem with PowerPoint slide presentations. TLT staff demonstrated to him how to edit the clips using iMovie software and place them onto DVD. Richards and his teaching assistants performed the actual work of making the DVDs. The DVD format allows one to more easily begin playing a clip on cue than with a videocassette. As Richards explains, "In a class of 500, ten seconds is how much time you need for the students to all of a sudden start talking, and then it takes me sixty seconds to get them quiet again. You have to be ready. It's like a theater production."
For one exercise in the course, each student is photographed with a person of a different race or ethnic background. The student then shows the photo to friends and family in order to generate discussion, sometimes lively, regarding diversity and prejudice. In the past, class photos were taken using a conventional camera, film was sent out to be developed, then each student was given a photo print. However, the class is now too large to make that feasible, according to Richards. TLT supplied him with a digital camera to take the student photos. Staff then demonstrated how to use Photoshop to make thumbnail galleries of the photos to place on the course Web site at http://www.personal.psu.edu/smr8/119PhotoProjIndex.htm, where each can be clicked to view a larger image. Getting this process going was a "huge help," says Richards.
TLT assisted with a survey Richards designed to discover student attitudes toward race and ethnicity and aspects of their upbringing. Staff formatted the survey for the Web, so that students could fill it out and submit it online. Richards comments, "that was a great tool to have." He explains that using the statistical software SPSS, he can compile the data from survey submissions into pie charts or bar graphs. Richards administered the survey in fall 2002, and found it gave him "a real sense of what the thinking is on a particular topic." When he covered a topic in class, such as affirmative action, he could then cite the relevant student opinions on that topic.
TLT staff captured video of several class lectures, then streamed brief portions to post on the course Web site at http://www.personal.psu.edu/smr8/Soc119/VideoClipsFromLecture/119videoclipsmain.htm. Richards notes that students often talk about the course with their parents and others, and these lecture excerpts give them a feel for what it is.
In addition to their assistance with SOC 119, TLT staff assisted with the making of two videos for use with the Race Relations Project, another endeavor initiated by Richards. One was shot by TLT personnel and one by Richards and his wife, Dr. Laurie Mulvey. The videos were edited and streamed for the Web in the Faculty Multimedia Center, run by TLT.
Richards says of the course components TLT assisted with, "I think all of these things allow students to feel more connected to the course." He points out that students frequently go to the Web for information, and he must keep his course site updated. "You can't teach a class like this without really using the technology," he says, adding that "dynamic, fast-paced class input is really what students want. They're used to that and they need that. But, of course, in the end, what students really want is to be challenged to think in new ways and technology must not get in the way of that goal."
