You’re advocating for quantity over quality. You will easily find situations where students don’t learn in small groups because the professor lecturing that group isn’t a good professor.
I’m not excluding hiring good teachers and TAs from the picture. I’m not excluding paying them a good enough wage to attract talent either. But that’s another conversation.
In my university days lectures were paired with seminars. And those had a max size of about 30, and a TA who would explain and help apply the lecture knowledge. The lecturer would visit seminars on rotation and ensure the quality of TAs. And the kicker? The whole gang would be there for the (free form) exam, including the grading.
In short: it can be done because that’s where we come from, actually.
And personally I hate multi choice tests, there is no opportunity to see the thought process of the student, or find and be lenient towards those that got the theory, but forgot to carry a 1 somewhere. They simplified the grading, sure, now you can have a machine do it, but thats about it.
Do you know the main function of freshmen courses? It’s to make sure that every student has the same base knowledge before going into sophomore level courses. It’s giving the students from shitty high school backgrounds an opportunity to catch up with those from private schooling and those from school boards that didn’t provide sufficient challenges. These courses don’t need a higher teacher to student ratio, they just need students to pay attention to the lectures and talk to the TA if they’re stuck.
Here’s a novel idea, maybe it needs less students per teacher. Or more teachers per student, however you want to call it.
For classes that’s are mostly lectures, it doesn’t need it.
“But how will we keep our enormous administrative overhead to ourselves?”
You’re advocating for quantity over quality. You will easily find situations where students don’t learn in small groups because the professor lecturing that group isn’t a good professor.
I’m not excluding hiring good teachers and TAs from the picture. I’m not excluding paying them a good enough wage to attract talent either. But that’s another conversation.
In my university days lectures were paired with seminars. And those had a max size of about 30, and a TA who would explain and help apply the lecture knowledge. The lecturer would visit seminars on rotation and ensure the quality of TAs. And the kicker? The whole gang would be there for the (free form) exam, including the grading.
In short: it can be done because that’s where we come from, actually.
And personally I hate multi choice tests, there is no opportunity to see the thought process of the student, or find and be lenient towards those that got the theory, but forgot to carry a 1 somewhere. They simplified the grading, sure, now you can have a machine do it, but thats about it.
Do you know the main function of freshmen courses? It’s to make sure that every student has the same base knowledge before going into sophomore level courses. It’s giving the students from shitty high school backgrounds an opportunity to catch up with those from private schooling and those from school boards that didn’t provide sufficient challenges. These courses don’t need a higher teacher to student ratio, they just need students to pay attention to the lectures and talk to the TA if they’re stuck.
Except you have forgotten the reason we are having this conversation is that they aren’t learning in those situations because of rampant cheating.
People still cheat in smaller classroom settings.