Teaching a large course presents opportunities and challenges for course planning, student engagement, assessment, and communication. While many effective teaching practices apply across class sizes, larger enrolments may require additional consideration of how learning activities are organized, how students participate and receive feedback, and how teaching teams and technologies support course delivery.
This resource offers practical considerations for planning and teaching large courses, whether in person, online, or in hybrid formats. It also highlights examples from University of Toronto instructors and technical considerations for managing large courses in Quercus.
Planning and Designing Large Courses
Planning a large course involves considering how course activities, assessments, communication, and support will work at scale. Clear organization and coordination can help instructors and teaching teams manage these responsibilities while supporting student learning.
The following strategies can support planning and teaching large courses:
- Align course activities and assessments with learning outcomes. Consider how your learning outcomes can be supported and assessed in a large class. Review whether learning activities, assessment formats, and opportunities for feedback are feasible given the course enrolment, teaching context, and available support.
- Establish clear course organization and communication. Provide students with consistent information about course expectations, schedules, assessments, and available supports. Consider how Quercus or other course communication channels can help students locate essential information and receive timely updates.
- Coordinate responsibilities across the teaching team. If working with Teaching Assistants (TAs) or other teaching team members, clarify roles, responsibilities, communication practices, and approaches to supporting students. Regular coordination can help promote consistency across tutorials, labs, grading, and other course activities.
- Plan for accessibility and learner variability. Consider how students will access course materials, participate in learning activities, and demonstrate their learning. Proactively identifying potential barriers and offering accessible, flexible approaches where appropriate can support students with different needs and circumstances.
- Plan for the practical demands of assessment and feedback. Larger enrolments may require additional planning for grading, providing feedback, managing assessment deadlines, and responding to student questions. Consider approaches that are manageable for the teaching team while providing students with meaningful opportunities to understand their progress.
Supporting Engagement and Participation
Large courses can present challenges for interaction and participation, particularly when instructors have limited opportunities to connect with individual students or gauge their understanding during class. However, large enrolments also bring diverse perspectives and opportunities for collaborative learning. Intentional approaches to engagement can help students connect with course material, their peers, and the teaching team.
The following strategies can support engagement and participation in large courses:
- Create opportunities for active participation. Incorporate brief activities that invite students to engage with course concepts, such as responding to questions, discussing ideas with peers, or working through a problem. Consider how activities can be adapted to the size, format, and physical or virtual environment of the course.
- Gather feedback on student understanding. Plan opportunities to check students’ understanding throughout a class session rather than relying solely on visible reactions or questions from a small number of students. Classroom response systems, short polls, anonymous questions, or brief formative assessments can help identify areas that may need clarification.
- Provide different ways for students to ask questions and contribute. Consider combining opportunities for questions during class with other communication channels, such as Quercus discussions or designated question-submission options. These approaches can provide additional opportunities for students to participate without requiring them to speak in front of a large group.
- Support connections among students and with the teaching team. Create opportunities for students to interact with peers through brief discussions, collaborative activities, or tutorials where available. Clearly communicate how students can connect with instructors and TAs for questions, feedback, and additional support.
- Use examples and demonstrations to make learning meaningful. Incorporate demonstrations, case studies, applications, or other examples that help students connect abstract concepts with disciplinary questions and real-world contexts.
Examples from U of T Instructors
In 2016, U of T News interviewed four instructors about their experiences teaching in Convocation Hall, one of the University’s largest teaching spaces. The Inside Con Hall series explores the strategies, challenges, and opportunities associated with teaching large classes.
- Kenneth Yip, Cell and Systems Biology: Discusses adapting teaching approaches for large classes, using classroom response questions to gauge student understanding, and planning opportunities for feedback.
- Christian Caron, Sociology: Shares approaches to encouraging student interaction, drawing on diverse perspectives, and using classroom response systems and online discussions to support engagement.
- Mike Reid, Astronomy and Astrophysics: Reflects on advance planning, coordinating teaching responsibilities, encouraging student questions, and responding to accessibility considerations.
- Ashley Waggoner Denton, Psychology: Describes creating a welcoming learning environment, using demonstrations to illustrate course concepts, and encouraging peer discussion and student connections.
Quercus (Canvas) Considerations for Large Courses
This section provides information about factors that influence the performance of various tools in Quercus (Canvas), but it does not cover all scenarios that may affect page response times.
Course Weight
The dimensions that generally affect Canvas performance are student enrolment and assignments. Courses can be large in either or both dimensions. Course weight is calculated as follows:
Course Weight = Number of Students × Number of Assignments
Gradebook
The Gradebook should render consistently in courses with a course weight of up to 80,000.
SpeedGrader
In large courses, SpeedGrader loading times are affected by a threshold of data points that can be loaded within a 60-second window. This threshold is based on a single submission per student. Multiple submissions by the same student increase the submission threshold.
Assignments with more than 1,500 submissions may result in delayed SpeedGrader loading times, and assignments with more than 2,500 submissions may fail to load.
Course Analytics
Course Analytics was successfully tested up to a course weight of 50,000. Courses exceeding this threshold may experience loading issues.
Course Analytics also has a section-weight limitation. Section weight is calculated by multiplying the number of sections by the number of students. When section weight exceeds 100,000, Course Analytics cannot load and displays a message indicating that the course is too large.
If Course Analytics does not load in a course with a weight below 50,000, contact Canvas Support.
Classic Quizzes
For optimal course performance in the Canvas interface, quiz statistics will only generate for quizzes with 100 or fewer unique questions or 1,000 total attempts.
For instance, a quiz with 200 questions will not generate quiz statistics. However, a quiz with 75 questions will generate quiz statistics until the quiz has reached 1,000 attempts.
Results greater than these maximum values can be viewed by downloading the Student Analysis report and viewing the CSV file.