‘Supersizing’ the College Classroom:
How One Instructor Teaches 2,670 Students
John Boyer teaches
a megaclass in current
events at Virginia
Tech in person—and
holds online office
hours (above) using
Ustream.
BLACkSBURG, VA.
IN October, Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu kyi, got a quirky request on You Tube. A hyperactive instructor in a plaid jacket posted a video inviting her to do a Skype interview ith his “World Regions” geography class at Virginia Tech. Ms. Suu kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate often compared to
Nelson Mandela, might have ignored this plea were it not for how the
video ended. The camera pivoted from the instructor, John Boyer, to
an auditorium filled with some 3,000 students. They leapt from their
seats, blew noisemakers, and chanted her name as if the Hokies had
scored a touchdown.
It worked. On December 5, Ms. Suu kyi, who last month won
election to Parliament after spending much of the past two decades
in detention, took questions from Mr. Boyer’s students via Skype. “I
cried a little bit,” says Alex Depew, a senior. “I’m not gonna lie.”
By MARC PARRY
The moment marked the biggest coup yet in Mr. Boyer’s experiment
with supersizing the classroom. Conventional wisdom deems smaller
classes superior. Mr. Boyer, a self-described “Podunk instructor,” calls
that “poppycock.” He’s exploring how technology can help engage
students in face-to-face courses that enroll from 600 to nearly 3,000
students.
It’s a timely project that may suggest tips for others. In a recent
survey of financial conditions at state universities, 56 percent of re-
spondents said that budget constraints were causing them to collapse
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sections into fewer, larger classes, according to the Association of Pub-
lic and Land-Grant Universities. At Virginia Tech, about two dozen
classes exceed 300 students.
“They’re not going anywhere,” says Peter E. Doolittle, director of
Virginia Tech’s Center for Instructional Development and Educational
Research. “We’re better off learning how to teach well in large classes,
rather than trying to avoid them.”
Boyer describes his course as an “Intro to the Planet” that brings
“the average completely uninformed American” up to speed on world
issues. His approach? Decentralize the rigid class format by recreat-
ing assessment as a gamelike system in which students earn points for
completing assignments of their choosing from many options (1,050
points earns an A, and no tasks, not even exams, are required). Saturate
students with Facebook and Twitter updates (some online pop quizzes
are announced only on social media). keep the conversation going with
online office hours.
And snag big-name visitors by turning the enormous class into a
digital hive that swarms them with requests. Other recent guests have
included Emilio Estevez and Martin Sheen, whose recent movie fo-
cuses on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain, and Jason
Russell, creator of “kony 2012,” a viral video about the brutal Ugandan
rebel leader Joseph kony.
“I’m not sure any of these things would have occurred without a class
B8 THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION • THE DIGITAL CAMPUS
MAY 4, 2012
