Teaching any subject in large sections (100 to 300 students) is difficult, but teaching operations management with heavy doses of quantitative/procedural type material presents a lot of unique challenges. In a large lecture hall students are farther away from the professor and as a result don’t feel comfortable asking questions and seem to be a bit less engaged than in smaller settings. The trick is to make the large room seem smaller and the lecture more interesting. Many may not want to admit this, but teaching in this setting requires more entertainment value to keep the students engaged.
Over the years I’ve used a combination of tactics that seem to be effective. Five minutes before class begins I play rock videos on the video screen with volume turned up to a high level. It energizes me and wakes up the students. When class starts I show a short funny video (1 minute or so) to help the students relax. As I lecture I move around a lot (back and forth and up and down the aisles) utilizing exaggerated arm/hand movements. I don’t use a microphone since I have a big voice, but I do talk louder than my normal speaking voice with more variation in speed of delivery and voice inflection. The idea is to make you seem larger and the room seem smaller.
During the lecture I sprinkle in operations management examples from my career with a little self-deprecating humor added. Some of the examples have definite entertainment value, but examples seem to foster understanding and I ask questions on exams based on those examples. I also utilize the Turning Technologies personal response system “clickers” (I’ll discuss my experience with PRS in the next blog). Use of the PRS system (in Power Point form) has three distinct advantages:
- Refocuses the students’ attention (4 to 5 questions per lecture)
- Allows for collaborative learning
- Reinforces key points that may be exam questions (if students don’t get the correct answer I back track to bolster understanding).
PRS responses may also be utilized as an additional assessment tool for accreditation justification or for research purposes. In short, variation seems to keep students engaged and at a point where they can retain more.
Phillip Flamm is an Instructor in the Information Systems and Quantitative Sciences department of the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University