Pam, the Deputy Director of LEaD and a professor in Educational Development, shared some of her years of experience with lecturing to large groups with the attendees of the Establishing a Teaching Persona course. You can take a look at her advice and some links to further resources in the teaching large groups handout. Her top ten tips about teaching in large groups are:
- Be at the room in plenty of time – if there’s no class before yours, you can get in and set up
- Welcome students as they come in – this does make a difference
- Start on time and have a slide after your title slide that has learning outcomes for the session – this helps students know what to expect and enables you to provide an overview of what is to come
- Ensure your slides are not too full of text – use pictures/graphics and key words rather than write full explanations
- When you have students doing activities, like paired discussions and group activities, do walk around the room so they can ask questions if they need to
- Keep an eye on the time and keep to the times you have given them for activities
- If delivering a short lecture part, do tell the students if it is okay to ask questions
- If using a quiz leave enough time for students to respond – but not too long
- Finish the session with what next: so is there anything they need to do on Moodle, or related reading?
- Enjoy the session and be enthusiastic – it makes a difference!