Fixed-Seating, Big Classes...Can You Do Active Learning?

Active learning usually has associations of small groups of students talking and moving around a classroom filled with gleaming tech and slick seating. For most instructors, those types of classrooms are not where they spend most of their teaching time. How can instructors in large lecture halls with tiered seating, minimal tech, and large classes access the advantages of active learning for their students? 

In early March, a number of Northwestern instructors joined staff from Northwestern IT Teaching and Learning Technologies and Media and Technology Innovation in a lecture hall to explore this question. From this event and advice shared by instructors, we’ve compiled the following list of practices to help you adapt the activities and principles of active learning for any classroom. 

1. Small group work is effective no matter how large your class is. 
2. Manipulate the space and move students around the room.  
3. Have fun and keep it simple with tech. 
4. Make durable, re-useable activity supports. 

Small Group Work 

Instructors who often have their students do paired and small group work in large lecture halls report a lot of success with these activities. Some effective practices for paired and small group work include: 

• Set up a OneDrive or Google doc for the class and give each group a  page with templated questions or activities on it. The instructor can browse the document as the groups work and “listen in” to developing ideas. 
• Move around the classroom to listen or join conversations. Moving around the classroom helps students recognize that you are actively teaching during these activities. 

Manipulate the Space 

It is difficult to get a large group of students to move around a space quickly in the middle of class. One way to mix up students during paired or small group work is to tell them to pair with students in the row ahead or behind them.  

Consider getting students to sit in different places from the start of class. One option is to assign different parts of the room to different sections, which can help with quick attendance taking, and then change up where sections sit throughout the quarter. If there is a group project in the class, have students sit with their groups to get familiar with each other and to work on relevant activities during class.  

Another approach is to treat the rows of seating like a poll, asking students to sit in the row that matches their answer. For example, “Which problem set should we start with today?”  Rows 1-4 = Answer A, Rows 5-8= Answer B, Rows 8-12= Answer C, etc. Students “vote” by sitting and now you may have a different combination of students sitting together. 

Tech 

When incorporating technology into your class, keep it simple.  Don’t forget about the humble document camera as a quick, easy way to share student work with the whole class. Other tech options are available, like Solstice for screen sharing and Miro for digital whiteboarding, but sometimes you just need to quickly share a diagram, note, or even online document with the class without too much fuss. Document cameras are installed in most classrooms and can be easily switched on to share handwritten notes, a tablet screen, or even a laptop screen.  

If there are minimal microphones in your classroom, consider trying out a throwable Catchbox microphone. These microphones can be thrown around the room, making them an easy and interactive way for you to hear students speaking. Contact the Media and Design Innovation team to test out the available Catchbox microphones and request to have one installed in your classroom. 

Re-useable Activities  

Many instructors use “generic” or re-useable questions to make preparing for class easier and faster, but still allow for student engagement.  

• In your lecture slides, incorporate yes/no questions and ask students to signal their answer by giving a thumbs up or down. 
• Make a weekly quiz in Canvas that has generic questions and answers. For example, “Question 1” and “Answer A,” Answer B,” etc. In the lecture, provide the actual question content and answer options via your lecture slides and ask students to answer the quiz in Canvas or via a polling tool. 
• QR codes and short URLs are helpful for quickly getting students to a resource you want to use in class. To reduce the number of QR codes/short URLs needed, make one that goes to a folder, rather than an individual document. Within the folder, name documents by lecture date or some other meaningful information so that students can find the resource you want them to use. 
  

Interested in joining the active learning lecture hall conversation? Request a consultation with someone from TLT and the classrooms team, join a future workshop, or share your own experiences directly with us.  

A huge thank you to the instructors who shared their advice with us in preparation for this event!  

• Danielle Sass 
• Joe Hummel 
• Justin Brown 
• Sara Hernández-Saborit 
• Sruti Bhagavatula  
• Suzanne Olds 
• Vincent St. Amour 
• Zach Wood-Doughty