Doing 'more' (better)
For tenure-track faculty, budget cuts often mean doing more, not less
When I wrote about ‘doing less’, I noted that that post was really for staff, and that the challenges facing faculty are somewhat different. That is because tenure-track faculty are the one group for whom budget cuts will almost certainly mean doing more. ‘More’ could mean bigger classes (as departments try to use fewer temporary lecturers), more classes (if there is less assigned time for course release), and/or less support for things like grading or lab assistance (which are among the few areas where departments have discretion to cut back immediately).
While all of these things may require some adjustment, I don’t actually think any of them have to be quite as onerous as many faculty think, at least after a bit of investment upfront. I say that as someone who has taught a 500-seat class that was pretty interactive, as well as upper-division classes of 80 with team-based learning (TBL), and writing-intensive classes of 40 without spending every waking hour grading, so I feel fairly safe making this claim. But for each of those courses, I spent a lot of time intentionally designing the class before I taught it for the first time.
Toward the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote a post about the importance of good course design, of thinking through the WHAT and the HOW (in that order) of your class. The WHAT refers to the three big questions every instructor should be able to answer:
What knowledge, skills and attitudes will students learn? (goals and outcomes)
What evidence will students produce to show they have learned? (assessments)
What will students do in order to acquire the requisite knowledge, skills and attitudes, i.e., what will they do to actually learn? (activities)
In general, the goals and outcomes (#1) shouldn’t really change just because the class size goes up or you lose your grading help. But assessments (#2) for bigger classes may need to be different than assessment for smaller classes, depending on what you did before, especially if you don’t have much grading help. For example, when I taught Principles of Micro for 50 students, my exams included a lot of open-ended questions that would have been way too time-consuming to grade when I had 500 students. But these days, converting open-ended questions to multiple-choice is a pretty easy task for AI (and for those concerned about the ‘rigor’ of MC, note that well-written multiple-choice questions can be just as effective at assessing learning as open-ended questions, as well as not being susceptible to grader bias). AI can also be a big help in developing rubrics that make written assessments easier to grade as well (I’ll have to write a whole separate post about how peer review can be both a time-saver and a learning experience in writing-intensive classes).
The activities (#3) in bigger classes may need to be different as well, but I strongly believe that instructors do NOT need to abandon discussion and interaction; it just may need to look different. I would even venture to suggest that for some instructors, thinking about how to make a large class interactive could lead to approaches that are better for all students. For example, in small classes, instructors may prompt “class discussion” by calling on individual students. While that can feel more interactive, it requires a lot of careful attention on the part of the instructor to make sure it actually engages *every* student. In comparison, using audience response systems (“clickers”), or other tech tools, in large classes can ensure that each and every student participates.
The big caveat is that for both assessments and activities, making adjustments for different contexts (whether size, modality, more or less grading help, etc.) will be a LOT easier if the learning outcomes are well articulated in the first place. Most campuses also have a number of resources to help faculty think about different pedagogical approaches; on my campus, that assistance is primarily offered through my Center, the Center for Inclusive Excellence, as well as the Center for Teaching and Learning and Instructional Technology Services. Almost every campus has similar units but on the off chance your institution does not, feel free to use this course design toolkit (or this self-paced course) to work through those what questions on your own...