Skip to main content

Fluctuating enrollments

For the last three semesters, I've taught one or two sections of the Data Analysis course with 75 students in each section (yes, this is an upper-division course and yes, I think it's insane). I teach the class with team-based learning (which I realized I haven't written about much - will put that on the To Do list), so there is still a lot of class discussion; from my perspective, the main problem with having 150 students is how long it takes me to grade the exams and papers (yes, I give essay exams and assign two papers, though one of the papers is supposed to be only about four pages). When I originally decided to teach the class with TBL, it was partly because of the material, which lends itself quite well to the TBL format of having students work on complex application exercises. But it was also partly because I knew the classes would be so large and working in teams seemed like a good way to still have lots of student interaction and class discussion.

However, this semester, my enrollments plummeted: I think I will have 36 students in one section and 24 in the other. I'll talk about why enrollments are so low in another post but these numbers have me wondering how this semester will differ from the past. On the one hand, it doesn't really make a lot of sense for me to spend much time re-vamping the class to take advantage of the smaller size, since I believe enrollments will be back up in the 70 range next semester. On the other hand, a part of me feels like I should be able to 'teach better' with such small classes and I feel a bit guilty if I don't even try. On the other, other hand, I still feel like TBL is the best way to teach this material so why 'fix' what ain't broke? Maybe I should just be grateful that I won't be spending as many hours grading and leave it at that; after all, my other class is the writing class so it's not like I won't have plenty of grading to keep me busy, and it would be nice to be able to give that class more attention without killing myself.

This is going to be an interesting semester...

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

This is about getting through, not re-inventing your course

As someone who has worked hard to build a lot of interactivity into my courses, I have never been interested in teaching fully online courses, in part because I have felt that the level of engaged interaction could never match that of a face-to-face class (not that there aren't some exceptional online courses out there; I just have a strong preference for the in-person connection). But the current situation is not really about building online courses that are 'just as good' as our face-to-face courses; it is about getting through this particular moment without compromising our students' learning too much. So if you are used to a lot of interaction in your F2F class, here are some options for adapting that interaction for a virtual environment: [NOTE: SDSU is a Zoom/mostly Blackboard campus so that's how I've written this but I am pretty sure that other systems have similar functionality] If you use clickers in class to break up what is otherwise mostly lect...

Designing effective courses means thinking through the WHAT and the HOW (in that order)

I think most folks have heard by now that the California State University system (in which I work) has announced the intention to prepare for fall classes to be primarily online. I have to say, I am sort of confused why everyone is making such a big deal about this - no matter what your own institution is saying, no instructor who cares about their own mental health (let alone their students) should be thinking we are going back to 'business as usual' in the fall. In my mind, the only sane thing to do is at least prepare  for the possibility of still teaching remotely. Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed ...

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...