Rodney Dangerfield and Keith Gordon in the 1987 comedy 'Back to School' - courtesy of IMDB
As those of you who have been closely following my blogs know, ((I see you Snarky, Jeff and Britt), I am all about democracy, equity and access in higher education. The discussion/presentation last week in class opened my mind to the idea that that large classes are potential vehicles for addressing these constructs. The focus on the quality of the teaching, as opposed to the forum, in which material is learned/taught gives me hope and encouragement. After all I would go to see the “Eagles” in the Hampton Coliseum and not wait for them to appear at the Phoebus VFW hall because of the size of the venue.
There is quite a bit of controversy wrt to larger class size. Conventional wisdom is turning out not to be all that wise! An environment that fosters learning has more to do with the skill set of the teacher, not only as an educator, but as one who is an adept classroom manager (particularly with the younger kids) rather than some agreed upon classroom capacity, which suggests anything over 30 kids leads to pandemonium.
Thanks for your thoughts. my thinking is that McClasses are her to stay, so we better to make them effective learning tools.