Daniel W. Barwick has an interesting essay up on Inside Higher Ed pondering class size and student learning. Classes with a few hundred students crammed into an auditorium are not conducive to student learning but are a more efficient use of college real estate, course scheduling, instructors and teaching assistants. Classes with a decent teacher-to-student ratio mean a better learning and teaching environment, but smaller classes mean more sections. A higher number of sections necessitates a more complicated course-scheduling and classroom-reserving dance. So what are colleges to do? What’s the perfect class size? Barwick points out that while everyone agrees smaller is better and bigger sucks, no one has actually done any research to figure out what the optimum number might be. And since I can’t imagine that the number of people seeking higher education is going to dwindle any time soon, it’s a question worth delving into.

Here are some excerpts from Barwick’s essay:

When faculty here engage in periodic discussions of workload, class size arises repeatedly as a factor that leads both to the success of our students and, unfortunately for faculty, to the need to teach many class sections. (Obviously, the smaller the average class, the more individual class sections are needed to teach the same number of students.) Inevitably, the discussion is cast as a struggle between having high-quality student learning and increasing class size, with the underlying assumption, accepted by all, that these two are mutually exclusive.

Even those who suggest that increased class size is acceptable for particular sections and subjects do not normally argue that students will learn more in these inflated sections; rather, the argument is typically made that the current standard for student learning can be maintained. In all cases, however, the underlying assumption is unchallenged: Large class size is a “problem” that needs to be minimized or mitigated, because smaller classes are better.

Setting aside for a moment whether this assumption is true, it is worthwhile to review how this assumption came to be. The transformation of higher education in the United States during the 20th century is probably a familiar one. Speaking very broadly, in the early part of the century college education was reserved for a much smaller group of people than it is afforded to today. Those who went to college were largely people of privilege and/or perceived intelligence, and for economic or cultural reasons most other people did not attend college. Following the Second World War, the GI Bill allowed (and encouraged) many to attend college who otherwise would have difficulty attending. The number of students increased, colleges grew to accommodate the growth, and the opportunity to go to college was pushed farther and farther into socioeconomic groups that previously were not traditionally college students.

Anyone who doesn’t think this is a good outcome, I would suggest, is nutty. But the transformation brought with it a set of changes, and one of them was a growth in the size of college classes. We see this change in its most extreme forms in the large universities that host Introduction to Psychology or comparable subjects in large lecture halls that seat 300 students. There isn’t even a pretense that one teacher can effectively teach such a large set of students or that the arrangement is ideal; the teacher is equipped with a fleet of teaching “assistants,” and often the class is divided up into smaller sections for part of the weekly instruction, with the smaller sections taught by the assistants. The assistants often divide up the grading as well. Such situations are accepted as a necessary evil that accompanies the large university. I’m not going to argue in favor of such arrangements; I think the educational value of such a classroom setting is dubious when compared to some of the alternatives.

But does this mean that small class size is always desirable? What is fascinating about this question is how little serious effort has been expended to answer it. The truth is that given the importance of educational quality, it is noteworthy how little work has been done to establish whether increased class size in itself is always a detriment.

The current tension between large classes and educational outcomes is an inevitable outcome between two incompatible ideas: Large-scale education delivery using methods designed for small-scale instruction. Educators know that traditional teaching techniques and large-scale instruction are incompatible, but shy away from examining radically different teaching methods because maintaining the status quo is easier than implementing massive change in their day-to-day teaching methods.

My purpose in this essay is not to defend large classes. My purpose is to demonstrate that a decision to offer large classes or to avoid them requires a much larger set of commitments that are rarely discussed. You’d think that large universities would be heavily invested in finding new ways to teach large numbers of students while increasing student learning, but they’re not. You’d think that the current demands of higher education would have driven substantial research into methods of increasing learning while increasing class size, but it has not. What is needed is for those schools and communities that would benefit from the results of such research to fund it and to encourage it. The research may or may not be fruitful, but like any research we cannot know this before we begin. If we are to serve tomorrow’s college students by producing better and better graduates, if we are to charge tuition increases that perpetually exceed inflation, and if we are to continue the noble cause of expanding the circle of those who attend college, that serious research needs to begin now.

Posted by Alexa Harrington