[MUSIC PLAYING] JENNIFER DEAL: Hello, and welcome. My name is Jennifer Deal. And I'm an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology. Thank you for joining us today for the session on Strategies for Large Classes-- Management, Assessment, and Supporting TAs. 

We have a couple of objectives for this session. We would like to discuss challenges and strategies for classroom management for courses with increased enrollment size. We'll describe strategies for classroom assessments for large courses using Bloom's taxonomy particularly focused on assessment design. And then we'll identify tips for teaching assistants for large courses, including working with faculty, other TAs, as well as with students. 

So joining me today to kick us off, please let me welcome Dr. Elizabeth Topper Dr. Topper is a senior lecturer in the Department of Epidemiology. 

ELIZABETH TOPPER: Thanks, Jennifer. And hi, everyone. So my job today is to talk a little bit about assessment. And the challenge with assessments in large classes are really twofold. 

But before I go into that, I just want to show you Bloom's taxonomy. And if you are not familiar with Bloom's taxonomy, I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with this. You can Google it. You'll find it everywhere. It's a widely used paradigm that describes various levels of learning. 

Ideally, we want to design assessments that target higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy. So you can see it's shaped like a pyramid. And that's quite intentional as each level of learning builds upon the foundation set by the former. 

So at the very bottom of the pyramid, the most basic level would be remembering and then followed quickly by understanding. So clearly, we want students to remember and understand what they're taught in class. But ideally, we'll dig deeper into better levels of learning. 

So having students be able to apply their new knowledge to a new scenario, even better yet to analyze or evaluate something. And at the top of the pyramid, the deepest level of learning would be when students are able to create something new based on what they've learned. 

So the challenge in designing assessments that hit those higher levels of the taxonomy is that they're more difficult to create than those at the bottom. And also with large class sizes, they can take a lot of time and effort to grade. So I'm going to talk a little bit about how to get around these two challenges today. 

So one strategy for the first challenge is where we want to go higher. Require critical thinking on assessments. So it's easier to grade multiple choice or simple true-false questions. But those aren't as good a measure of learning as an essay, for example, or a short-answer question. But they do take longer to grade. So as a compromise, you might consider incorporating range responses. 

So what I mean by this is, for example, if you're asking students to do a calculation, instead of giving them a multiple-choice response where the choices are 5, 15, and 20 whereby you're basically giving them the answer with three red herring choices, dig a little deeper. Give ranges. So instead, you might ask, is the answer to this calculation between 0 and 7, 8 and 12, 13 and 17, or 18 and 23? 

For a noncalculation example, rather than just a simple yes-no, you might ask students to justify their answer. And this can also be made into an easier-to-grade multiple-choice question by giving choices such as yes because of this or yes because of that and, conversely, no because of this or no because of that. 

Asking students to give you answers that they can find directly in your slides or, frankly, sometimes directly in Google operates more at the bottom of the pyramid. So try to aim higher by having students apply their new knowledge to a different scenario than the one you use to introduce the topic. Consider asking them to analyze or evaluate the results or create something new. 

One potential pitfall is that these types of assessments can tend to require subjective grading, which, of course, we don't want. So to help with this, try developing a rubric for these assignments. 

I know that rubrics can be somewhat time consuming to create. But once you have it, it can be a really useful tool both for faculty and students. It helps to set expectations, showing students exactly what you're expecting on the assignment. It removes ambiguity by showing them these are the characteristics of a finished product that will be graded more favorably versus less favorably. And it can be helpful in avoiding that subjective assessment. 

And finally, strategies for the second challenge and how do we scale up. A good way to do that is to incorporate both formative and summative assessments. So formative assessments are those that are nongraded but give students an opportunity to try out their new skills versus summative assessments, which are graded. 

And why is this important? It's important because we learn by making mistakes. Anyone in science knows this by direct experience. We try something. It doesn't work. We tweak a variable. We try it again. That's how we learn. 

So trying and failing and trying again, we don't want students to be penalized for that. That's part of the learning process. You can grade completion of these formative assessments-- you get points off if you don't do it at all-- without grading the content. 

And so on this last slide, the table shows just some examples of formative assessments. There are many more. You can look up. And you'll find lots of these. 

But some frequently used ones are pre and postassessments, where you give a short quiz at the beginning of the course. It gives the instructor the baseline level of where the students are coming from and also shows students kind of a roadmap of where the instructor expects them to go with the postassessment, of course, showing progress by the end of the course. 

Practice problems are widely used. It allows students to try out their new skills with avoiding the need to grade. You can post an answer key. And they can self grade, which is even better for learning. Small-group projects, you can think about epi labs as an example of this. And this can be, of course, with or without presentation to the class. 

In-class polling can give you a-- just a touch point, a pulse of where the class is at. Three main points is where instead of summarizing at the end of your lecture, ask the students to do it for you. Ask them, what were the three main points of this unit or this lecture? 

And finally, elevator pitch is where you say to them, if you had three minutes to explain this concept in layman's terms, how would you do it? Really makes them think through, what are the important points that need to be related to someone else? So that's all I wanted to say about assessment. And I'll throw it back to you, Jennifer. Thanks. 

JENNIFER DEAL: Thank you, Elizabeth. At this time, please welcome Elizabeth Stone, who is a PhD candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management. 

ELIZABETH STONE: Thanks, Jennifer. I'm going to be talking a little bit about strategies for supporting TAs and also for TAs who are helping out in larger classes. So usually, if you're in a larger class, there might be a team of TAs. And so I have strategies for working with faculty, for working amongst the team of TAs, and then for interacting with students in the course. 

I think kind of the overarching theme of these strategies is really, how much can you figure out in terms of logistics and responsibilities before the term starts? You're going to be dealing with similar issues as you do in smaller class sizes. There's just going to be a higher volume because there's more students. 

And so for starting off for interacting with faculty, first you're-- when you agree to TA a course, it can be really important to let faculty know if you have other things going on that term, particularly if you know that something's going to come up where you'll need to block out some time, and you won't be able to be grading that time or checking CoursePlus and so really laying out kind of your capabilities before the term starts. 

And also, part of this discussion before term, it's important to delineate what the expectations of the TA role is and to revisit this throughout the term. This can really differ from class to class. 

And so for example, do students need to notify someone if they're going to miss a class? If so, do they notify the TAs? Do they notify the faculty? Do they just put something on the discussion forum? And so really laying out those kind of logistics. 

And a more complicated piece of this that I run into is having a plan for how students can ask for extensions or accommodations on assignments. Is this something that the TAs can help with? Is this something that needs to go through the course faculty? And as a TA, even if it doesn't go through you, it might be your job as a TA to set up extended time on a quiz in CoursePlus or to know if someone is going to be turning in an assignment late. 

And so thinking through these steps and processes ahead of time with the faculty can help you prepare for how to do these things. But also think about scheduling and what this means for turnaround for graded assignments or how many assignments you're going to be having coming in when [INAUDIBLE]. 

Again, larger-class sizes typically have more TAs. And the roles that TAs have might be the same or might differ based on grading or administrative things. And so as with the faculty, delineating TA responsibilities ahead of the term is a really helpful way to figure out who's going to be doing what. 

So this might include how grading is going to be split, who will be checking for questions on the discussion forum and how frequently those need to be checked. For some larger classes, we have found that it might make sense for students to be assigned a specific TA to contact. That way, they know who to reach out to. They're not sending kind of duplicative emails asking multiple people the same thing and kind of using time in a way that's not really efficient for anyone. 

And then finally, a couple strategies when thinking about working with students in the large class sizes. And for me, a lot of this is really not getting kind of overwhelmed with the amount of students and the amount of work that that might create. 

And so something I've found helpful is to first kind of introduce yourself to the class and to introduce yourself in the context of what you do. I'm also a student. I'm doing research. I'm working on my dissertation. I have other things that-- going on that are not TAing this class. And, sometimes, I might make mistakes. Things might happen. But I am doing my best to kind of work with you and support you in your learning here. 

Another strategy that I have is to kind of help keep things manageable in terms of time and also to keep track of the time you're working if you're billing for hours is that it might be helpful to schedule office hours. 

And so typically, we think of office hours as times when students can come in and ask questions. But you can also set aside your own office hours or your own working hours for responding to emails or checking the section forum or having a set time where you're going to do those things. That way, you're not kind of finding yourself answering emails kind of at all hours of the day from students. 

And I also really recommend familiarizing yourself as much as you can with the automated features in CoursePlus. So there's a lot of stuff in CoursePlus. There's resources from CTL. And making use of these features for things like tracking attendance or participation or grading quizzes can help so that you're not making extra work for yourself. 

And again, for me, this is one of the harder things about TAing a larger course versus kind of a smaller, more seminar course is not letting the work kind of completely overwhelm your schedule. And so I do think a lot of what has been presented in this session can be helpful for both faculty and TAs. But hopefully, this provides a little extra support for TAs specifically. Thanks. 

JENNIFER DEAL: Thank you, Elizabeth. Welcome also, please, Dr. ME Hughes, who is an associate scientist in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health. 

ME HUGHES: Thanks, Jennifer. I'm going to talk about two aspects of managing larger-than-usual classes. And they're both pretty practical. The first is about administration. And in many ways, it's not just scaling up. It's rethinking how you do your work. Also, something about activities and the staff workload and how you handle student engagement. I'll give you some general issues with some examples from the courses I teach. 

The first thing is to refine your policies and procedures. Anticipate situations, especially from previous years. And make explicit policies. So for example, over the years, I've realized that it makes sense to have an alternate assignment for students who know in advance that they can't make an interactive session whether a discussion session or a live talk. 

I've finally developed a policy of allowing one late quiz in a class in which I give a weekly quiz on the material because inevitably students have conflicts. And many of these things are genuine. They have issues. And so I just allow one late quiz. And it takes the burden off us in terms of policing that. 

Do all you can to direct students to resources outside your class. So give them links to videos and how-to documents, for example, converting files to PDFs. And remind them that CTL Help is there for technical CoursePlus issues. 

And I find these issues are especially important because I teach a class to the MPH cohort in summer term. And they're all new to CoursePlus. Many of them haven't used a course learning system before. And so it helps to have these resources there for them. 

This is one of my favorites, which is inform students about all policies and procedures. I think I'm a bit notorious because my syllabi are-- well, they're not quite War and Peace. But they're getting there. I use the syllabus page to list all the information. And I try to make very defined sections, definition of participation and so on. I make a separate section for all the late work policies on each assignment. 

So create custom sections as you need. And that way, students' eyes go to that header. They may not read the whole syllabus to begin with. But when they need the information, it's there. And you could always add links to documents that have additional details. 

With respect to the CoursePlus site, show students where to find the information. Give them a little tour of your CoursePlus site. I realized after teaching for about five years that faculty use CoursePlus very differently. And especially for the new MPH cohort but also for students who've been in the program or been in the school for a while, they've seen many different arrangements. 

And so it's helpful to them to know that, OK, in this class, we're going to use the course schedule. We're going to use the syllabus. And we're going to use the discussion forum and the quizzes. And that's it. Oh, and you need to find things on the online library. So just tell them what you're going to use and where to find it. 

Set your expectations for communication. Provide very clear instructions about where to ask questions whether it's in class or in an interactive session. And provide details and examples as needed. And give them a time frame in which to expect an answer. So we often say, we'll respond to the discussion forum within 24 hours. But on weekends, it may be longer. 

You can also say things like, if there's an automatic one-quiz extension policy, you can say, your only response to a quiz extension will be automatic-- an automatic email from CoursePlus so that you don't have to send an email out to every student saying, yes, I've approved your extension and things like that. 

So you notice these are all very practical, pretty common-sense techniques for just limiting and streamlining the workload when you have a lot of students. I teach classes with between 200 and 300 students. And so any way you can streamline, the better. And then you can also spend what sort of interaction capital you have on actually interacting with students about the issues and about the course material. 

A second thing about setting expectations for communication is explain what will happen if they don't follow the directions. So you may send them a response that says, please post this question to the discussion forum if it's a general question, and you've asked that all general questions be posted to the discussion forum. 

And you can make-- say this in a way where it's clear that, look, I want this to help other people. I'm not castigating you. But let's put this on the discussion forum. And I've put on this slide here some examples from my own syllabus. 

All right, finally, time savers, actually, not finally, almost finally. Use a weekly email to preview content. I'm sure you've all heard this before from CTL staff. It's a great idea. 

Use the CoursePlus Quiz Generator for problem sets or other assignments that may not-- may or may not be graded. But you can actually have them automatically assessed within the course generator-- quiz generator, which is really helpful to save time. 

Last, streamline your behind-the-scenes work. Standardize or automate your common tasks as much as you can. So have preprepared responses to the quiz extension requests as I just mentioned. Or tell students that they're just going to receive the automatic information from CoursePlus. Use the tools for scheduled emails and announcements in CoursePlus. Use the prior year's version as a draft. 

Also, facilitate sharing information among the course staff. So for example, in my large classes, I have a document that I sometimes call the student tracker document. But that sounds a little bit-- I don't know-- a little bit "stalk-y." But really, what it is, it's a document in which we have the assignments listed. We have information about each student's name, what they prefer to be called, their pronouns, if relevant their department and degree program. 

But then we also list any extensions they've been given, any issues that they're having, and so on so that we can keep track of this all. And we put this-- I put this on a Share drive-- excuse me-- on a SharePoint folder so that everybody has access to it and can update it as they go. 

I teach a course that has many moving parts. It has discussion sessions, discussion posts. It has a big assignment. And there's no way we could keep up with all of this without that tracker. 

One thing I do with my TAs is I say, if you have an email from a student, and you need it-- a response from me, forward it to me. And in the header, put in capitals decision needed or, if it's just for my information, FYI. And I tell them, I won't think you're shouting. But this way, it leaps out at me in my inbox. And I know that I need to respond to this. 

One thing we also do is we have students send emails to the-- all TAs. And that sounds like a recipe for inbox explosion. But what it means is that a TA is not saying to another TA, oh, did you answer this one? Oh, did she email you about this? 

And this year, actually, students have been really good about that. They email. And I actually include myself on-- in this particular course I teach in summer. And that way, we know, OK, this has been dealt with. I don't have to deal with this. And we tell students not to email us separately. 

So again, these are all just very practical, common-sense tips to help manage having many students in a class. So back to you, Jen. 

JENNIFER DEAL: Thank you, ME. At this time, I'd like to just summarize some of the discussion that we've had today on strategies for large courses here at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

In terms of classroom management, clearly setting expectations at the start of the course is really important. You want to set expectations for students about the way that we communicate with one another during the course of the class, with how things will be graded and how quickly things will be graded, so when students can be expecting feedback. 

We want to also have conversations so it's clear in terms of what sort of flexibility is available or accommodations are available in terms of assignment due dates and that sort of thing. Weekly faculty emails reminding students of the deadlines that are upcoming and the expectations for that week can be a great way to keep everyone organized. 

We want to prepare at the very start of the class and be thinking about those accommodations for our students with disabilities. We want to prepare for those accessibility needs so that everything happens seamlessly. Eight weeks is a very short amount of time. And that way, we make sure that our students get their necessary accommodations from day one of the course. 

We want to consider the intention and equity of language and processes. We want to make sure that we're communicating to all students exactly how they should go about getting an extension. Or if we're providing an extension for one student, we want to make sure that we're providing those opportunities for everyone else. 

Something else to help think about is, how can students support each other? So I think the discussion forum is a great example of the ways in which students can actually answer their own questions and be a support system for each other during the course. 

In terms of assessments, be sure to set expectations for any group work in advance so that everyone knows what they're expected to do, and everyone can participate actively in the group. 

We want to utilize formative or nongraded assessments when it's possible. Lecture self-assessments are a good example or practice problems. And we also can really make use of the many tools that CoursePlus has for us to help us with grading. So for example, in Quiz Generator, there are a lot of different options that-- for questions that can be automatically graded. 

Additionally, we want to think about if we want students to be grading each other so any peer assessments. Or we can use the Wiki tool as well as if we want to have students be writing and then commenting on each other's work. 

And then finally, in terms of supporting our teaching assistants, before class starts, it's very important to think through how you would like the class to run and to have your TAs understand your expectations for them. And when possible, I really recommend putting these expectations in writing and having a discussion before the term even starts. 

During class then, put a process in place for frequent check-ins with your teaching assistants. We want to make sure that the work is being split evenly and that there are no concerns from our students. We can also remind them of the upcoming schedule so that everyone is organized and on the same page. 

And finally, we want to remember that our teaching assistants are first and foremost students themselves. And we need to protect their time and make sure they have time for their own coursework as well as for their research. 

One suggestion of how to do this is to put all questions, instead of emailing TAs, all questions can then go to the discussion forum. And I, for example, tell my students in advance that we will not respond to any emails directly, that we'll only respond to questions posted to the discussion forum. 

Thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you very much to Elizabeth Topper, Elizabeth Stone, and ME Hughes. We hope that this has helped in terms of thinking about how to manage large classes here at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Thank you.  

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