University at Buffalo (UB)
Empowering Instructors | Supporting Excellence
Focus Groups for Instructors of Large Classes
The University at Buffalo has many exemplar instructors from among our significant number of professionals who actively work to enhance their teaching.
Teaching large classes can be a challenge for some instructors, with challenges including diversity of students, lack of flexibility, class climate management, difficulty of setting and enforcing classroom behavior, minimum attention to students, limited monitoring of students’ learning and difficulty in engaging students to activities (Fortes, & Tchantchane, 2010).
This project has been designed to explore techniques and teaching methodologies that experienced instructors may have, which can ultimately be shared with their peers to address these challenges. Through interviews and focus groups we will glean from instructors the successes and challenges of teaching large classes and present a variety of online resources to support instructors who teach large classes.
- Better understand the opportunities and challenges in teaching large classes at the University at Buffalo.
- Engage and support faculty to improve student academic success.
- Develop a shared understanding of effective classroom practices.
- Improve classroom instruction and student success.
- Tell me about your favorite classroom to teach in on campus? What about it makes it your favorite?
- How do you feel when you first step in front of a class of more than 70 students? How does that change by the end of the semester?
- What teaching and learning strategies do you find work well when teaching large classes?
- What teaching and learning strategies do you find do not work well when teaching large classes?
- What kinds of challenges have you encountered when teaching large classes?
- What resources do you need from UB to overcome these challenges or support the effective strategies? Think big.
There are currently no focus group offerings. Please check back soon for new opportunities.