One of this week's discussions is devoted to Tech Solutions in teaching large classes.Although I never taught large classes, I know how stressful it might be. After several readings among which the article found at
http://www.uoregon.edu/~tep/technology/communication/inclassdisc.html/.
I got some crucial ideas on how to maintain, prepare and lead succefful discussion.
Also,on NICENET some of the coursemates offered their own solutions related to teaching large classes issues. Stephen suggested some interesting ideas like tracking and asssessing students online, keeping calendars, and engaging students in projects to make them work collaboratively. In general,while teaching large classes it is possible to divide the students into more working groups and assign one project to such groups. Within this group there may be one project leader who would manage the other students and preapre reports about project development and process.
One more interesting thing, better say tools are about collaborative learning.As large classes imply extended amount of students, this means that they could all work collaboratively as the teacher does not have sufficient time and resources for each of them. I realized that during this online course, we being in the role of students already experience and use such tools as Wikis,blogging,discussion boards. All of them, if used appropriately "allow students to exchange ideas in a manner that closely approximates the face-to-face experience".
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