Managing large cohorts online
If, like everyone else, you have been required to shift to online teaching this year, you will no doubt have researched the best approaches to doing so.
There has been an avalanche of guidance, advice and tips on online teaching shared across the sector. Often the advice assumes manageable cohort sizes of 20-30 and not necessarily larger cohorts of 80-100, which are commonplace on-campus.
So, this leaves us with the question of how can you provide similar best practice support for larger cohorts as you would for smaller cohorts?
Expectation vs reality
Of course, it is more challenging to provide the same level of connection, attention and feedback with a larger cohort than a smaller one. All the touchpoints you would like to offer your students will require greater resource, energy and planning. Some of the key challenges when teaching larger classes include:
- Greater number of students means there are a greater variety of learning preferences and needs for you to be aware of and support. Utilise on-campus student support services to help identify needs and provide support as much as you can.
- Some student will perceive the larger cohorts as a place to hide and be more passive vs the classroom experience - plan group activities and utilise discussion forums to engage and monitor activity.
- Grading volume will be higher, though this is no different to managing large cohorts on-campus- incorporate carefully planned and communicated peer-grading and feedback activities to reduce the pressure on you, but also plan for the inevitable need to step in and provide some further guidance and/or mediation.
Beyond managing these key challenges and more, there are positive, proactive strategies you can employ to maximise the experience for both you and your students.
Utilise VLE announcements
For larger classes, Virtual Learning Environment announcements will be a great ally.
With one message you can reach all students in the cohort and if notifications are set up correctly, students will also receive the message in their email account.
Use announcements to welcome students to each week of learning, highlight key activities coming up, provide a personal touch and motivate and reward students for their participation.
Announcements are an efficient and effective way to boost engagement at scale.
Make the most of the power of the group
For example, you could ask students to break into smaller groups to discuss a topic or complete a task and then share their output with the whole class via the discussion forum. This way, smaller group work can have a large impact on the collective knowledge development of the class.
Share FAQs
With more students, there are more students to ask similar or the same questions of you. Think ahead to where you think the challenges with the module will be and provide an FAQ addressing these issues. Make the FAQ as helpful as possible, embedding links to course content, readings, web links etc to make it as attractive as possible for students to use.
Plan differentiated live sessions
You will be thinking about how you can utilise live sessions for larger cohorts, more on that below. In addition to thinking about how these can best be delivered, think about how you might plan them to offer some differentiation. Rather than one session for all, offer multiple sessions with different foci. You might offer a remedial session for those who are struggling with the content, a session for those who are comfortable and want to dig deeper and an assignment preparation focused session, as appropriate. Allow students to choose the best fit session for them.
Managing large groups live
So you’ve planned your live sessions, now how can you engage a large cohort online when there is only one of you.
Ask for help - Is there anyone in your faculty who can help support you, as a facilitator? Equally, is there anyone from the learning tech team who might help you manage tech issues etc? You never know, if you don’t ask.
Manage microphones - You’re probably already aware of the challenges of having lots of microphones on during live sessions. Mute all wherever possible and get familiar with how to quickly access unmuting options to allow individual contributions.
Engage with low stakes - Utilise some of the low stakes, easy to use interactivity features of live sessions. This includes chat, voting and reactions which vary across platforms. Students love a reason to use these features and they take little effort to deploy. Use these at least every 15-20 minutes to break up periods of inactivity for students.
Utilise breakout rooms - Divide and conquer. Most live sessions systems will allow you to divide up the larger group into smaller working groups. You can then, virtually, visit each group as they work on a task or engage in a discussion. This is an efficient and manageable way to provide a more personal approach and more connected touchpoints with your students, which they will value highly.
Summary
Managing large cohorts requires greater planning, co-ordination and resourcefulness than managing smaller cohorts. As always, check what support is available to you on-campus, ask your colleagues what has worked for them and reach out to your networks and teaching and learning groups for advice and tips.
This content has been created by the author in their personal capacity. Any views, thoughts and opinions expressed belong solely to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Pearson.