Innovation and creativity among professors is essential to high level learning in large lecture courses, and should be a focus of UNC faculty in order to keep students engaged at the foundational levels of their majors.
At a university as large as UNC, huge introductory level courses are — for better or for worse — effectively unavoidable.
With budget cuts already straining faculty resources, an easy outlet for cutting costs is combining smaller lower level courses into one massive section taught by one professor, supplemented by recitations led by graduate teaching assistants.
Most undergraduate students come into freshman year undecided on their major, and one of their only ways to gauge interest in particular fields is to take these big introductory classes.
Teachers in these courses have a real impact on each student’s choice of major.
It is a shame to have students’ potential in a certain field going unrealized because of a poor experience in a cavernous, disengaging introductory course.
These courses should be the focus of each department, because they are the classes that funnel students into their chosen disciplines.
The University must make a commitment to training professors teaching large lectures in basic engagement techniques and encouraging creativity in employing these methods.
Far too often, a main component of these huge classes is a pricy clicker, which is relatively ineffective in its purpose of simulating the participation of a smaller class size.
