Timothy Bresnahan

Large Classes: Keeping the Energy in 220 Relationships at Once

Large lecture classes for beginning students are a fact of life.  Their scale offers huge rewards, like watching a large group of people taking command of a new toolkit for thinking.   It also offers (at least)  three challenges:  keeping students energized, drawing them into the Stanford community and into the intellectual community associated with their major, and helping them command a new toolkit they will use in advanced classes.   I discuss three keys to meeting these challenges, focusing particularly on the 21st- century students.