Monstrous class sizes unavoidable at colleges

New methods show promise
At Virginia Tech, for instance, most introductory math courses now take place in a giant room called the “math emporium,” in a converted department store just off campus. Students rarely if ever meet together. Instead, they come in any time, 24 hours a day, to work through problems on the 500 computer work stations. When they have a question, they flip over a red plastic cup beside their desk, and helpers — upperclassmen, graduate students or professional staff — come by.

Despite the roomful of computer hardware, the emporium is a much less expensive way to teach — for one course about $24 per student, compared to about $77.

Teaching assistants in Parson’s chemistry course and at the math emporium say they’re growing increasingly confident in these kinds of methods. But some students are still sour on them.

“I can’t do it very well with someone teaching me,” said Ian Millington, a Virginia Tech sophomore who failed a calculus class but got a B when he took the same course last summer at a local community college. “So how am I going to teach it to myself?”

His mother, Jennifer Millington, says the family loves everything about Virginia Tech — except how it teaches math.

Steve Helber / ASSOCIATED PRESS Students use computers in the Virginia Tech Math Emporium in Blacksburg, Va., April 2007.

“If they’re going to keep raising the rates, I shouldn’t have to be going to a community college to pay for my kid to take calculus,” she said. “I know it’s a huge school and there are so many students, but if you get so large that you’re neglecting the masses (then) kids are falling through the cracks.”

Mike Williams, who oversees the emporium, concedes student reaction is mixed. “It turns out many resent they have to do more work,” he said. “They want to sit in a class like they’re watching the boob tube.”

But he says the popular option isn’t always the best way to teach. And it’s good for students to take on more responsibility for their learning.

The scholar approach
Big lectures have their place, but it’s too easy for students to hide, said Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Technology can help if teachers carefully study what works, as Wieman does. Otherwise, the latest gadgets will only further alienate students, as has happened with teachers who rely too much on tools like Microsoft PowerPoint.

Shulman invited Wieman to give his foundation’s centennial lecture last year.

“It’s not unusual for Nobel laureates to shift the direction of their work into a more socially and educationally focused kind of direction,” Shulman said. “What’s remarkably different about Carl is that he doesn’t just say, ‘I’m a Nobel Laureate, listen up,’ and then ask people to take teaching more seriously. He approaches it as a scholar.”

Frustrated with administrative turnover and funding, Wieman moved his base to the University of British Columbia this year while continuing some of his work at Colorado. He says he was determined to continue his work at a large public university — the kind of place where future K-12 teachers are trained.

If Harvard were to revolutionize introductory science teaching, “people would look at it and say, ’They’ve got more money than God, that doesn’t have any application to us,”’ Wieman says. But if places like Colorado and UBC can show measurable improvement, “it’s going to be a whole lot harder for people to argue they shouldn’t be doing it.”

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