Teaching Very Large Classes

Abstract

The editor of Teaching Theology and Religion facilitated this reflective conversation with five teachers who have extensive experience and success teaching extremely large classes (150 students or more). In the course of the conversation these professors exchange and analyze the effectiveness of several active learning strategies they have employed to overcome the passivity and anonymity of the large lecture format. A major point of debate emerges that contrasts the dynamically performative and highly informed and skilled lecturer with the “wasted time and money” that results from encouraging students to participate through various active learning strategies. Other themes include the importance of story telling in the religious studies classroom, the significance of the differences between students' learning styles, and the challenge of teaching and assessing critical thinking and communication skills.

Blame it on the weather? The association between pain in fibromyalgia, relative humidity, temperature and barometric pressure

“…Thus, the data used in this article is based on the pre-treatment period and does not report on the outcome of the RCT [17]. Depression and anxiety [19, 20], general symptoms of psychological distress [21], impact of fibromyalgia on daily functioning [22] and health-related quality of life [23] were measured at baseline (day 1) before the measurement period as previously reported [17]. In the pre-test period, the patients were treated identically, and all experimenter interaction was with experimenters that were unaware of the patients’ group allocation.…”

Sub-classifying patients with mild traumatic brain injury: A clustering approach based on baseline clinical characteristics and 90-day and 180-day outcomes

“…A global unique identifier (GUID) is used to track different variables of the same patient across the multiple files. The information used in this study was found in 12 different TRACK-TBI Pilot files, including: Abbreviated Injury Score (AIS), Assessment, CT scan results, injury history, medical history, subject demographics, Glasgow Outcome Score Extended (GOSE) [ 3 ], the brief symptom inventory (BSI) [ 4 ], the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) [ 5 ], the Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ) [ 6 ], the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) [ 7 ], and the Trail Making Test (TMT) score [ 8 – 9 ]. We used the FITBIR GUID to extract the variables in this study from the FITBIR files and integrate them into one file for all the patients.…”

“…We included 10 patient outcome measures: the Glasgow Outcome Score Extended (GOSE) [ 3 ] at 90 and 180 days, as well as eight others at 180 days (data on these outcome variables at 90 days were not recorded in the TRACK-TBI Pilot Study) including the brief symptom inventory (BSI) [ 4 ], the motor and cognition subscores of the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) [ 5 ], the cognition, emotion and somatic subscores of the Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ) [ 6 ], the digit span score from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) [ 7 ], and the Trail Making Test (TMT) score [ 8 – 9 ]. These outcome measures evaluate post-TBI global outcomes, psychological status, TBI related symptoms, physical function, and cognitive activity limitations/ neuropsychological impairment.…”

Embedding Universal Design for Learning in the Large Class Context

“…However, when faced with classes which are perceived to be large, it is often assumed that a banking, transmissive, 'talk-at-them' approach is the only teaching option (Stoerger & Krieger, 2016). Moreover, it is argued that in a large class, the educator will not have capacity to support individual students, teaching to the 'middle' (Arvanitakis, 2014), leading some to the conclusion that smaller classes are superior because they allow for active learning strategies to enable students to take responsibility for their own learning whereas that responsibility is seen to rest, by default, with the teacher in the large class context (De Rogatis et al, 2014). Conversely, based on the same set of assumptions, some perceive large classes as forcing students to take more responsibility for their own learning compared to small class contexts (Mulryan-Kyne, 2010).…”