Digital technologies and more hands-on approaches present new opportunities for large group teaching beyond the traditional lecture especially for large groups of students. These have the potential to make learning and teaching more interactive and stretch the learning experience beyond the classroom walls. Lecture capture technologies will also soon be available at MMU offering opportunities for active learning both within lecture room settings and at a distance.
Students come to university with smartphones, laptops and other smart devices. These can be utilised during a session to enable participation. There are a series of mobile apps and social media applications that make interaction during a large class possible including individual contributions as well as in groups. Examples include quizzes and multiple choice questions, responses to open questions. Furthermore such devices can be used to make and share visuals such as picture, drawings and video clips as a response to an activity or task or even to collect feedback on a session, unit or programme.
Manchester Met supports the use of Ombea for this kind of work (contact the Technology Enhanced Learning team for details), other examples are Answergarden or Mentimeter.
The flipped classroom approach can be used to transform lectures into an interactive experience. This approach frees time in the classroom and enables your students to share ideas, questions and debate. Interact with them! Ask yourself, what can students learn on their own? Then move this outside the classroom. Ask them to engage with specific readings and activities in advance and in-between session. Flip your classroom! Use the time you spend with your students wisely for things you know your students might struggle with. These can be some of the threshold concepts of your discipline for example.
Have a look at these videos:
We learn by experiencing, by doing. Create opportunities for experiential learning in the classroom. Object- and model-based learning can help and transform a session into an explorative experience through which students will be able to make valuable discoveries on their own and with their peers. Check out for example our LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® resources. Also consider using objects that will act as valuable learning hooks and make learning more memorable and sticky.
It doesn’t need an internet connection and even works when there is a powercut. Consider asking your students to have a pack with them, in each session, just like they carry a pen or their smartphone. Ever asked your students a question and only get an answer from a few? Well, then try the following: Ask your whole class a question. Ask everybody to articulate their response on a post-it note without asking them to add their name. Ask students to swap their post it notes randomly. Then ask your class to share the answer that is on the sticky note they have in their hands. You will notice that there will be many volunteers now… as the answer in front of them is not theirs. Removing that barrier talking about themselves will progressively help them to build confidence and participate more in class. Try it!
The scale-up classroom presents an alternative learning space to the traditional lecture theatre. It maximises working in groups through carefully arranged desks and chairs as well as technology that enable the lecturer and students to move around and interact more freely. It does require some changes to the traditional lecture theatre setting and an investment. It might be useful to explore if such changes would be possible in your department and faculty to maximise on interaction and collaborative learning in the large-group classroom.
If you are using any of the above approaches in your teaching, please get in touch so that we can capture this practice and further share across the institution via our Good Practice Exchange for example and tweet us your idea using @celtmmu.
Ideas for both large and small groups