Welcome to the PHELC website. PHELC aims to support higher education professors who teach large classes
Twitter: @PHELCprofessors #PHELCprofessors
As we flagged last year, we have spent some time reviewing PHELC in terms of immediate and long term planning. Below you will find our plans for this academic year arising from that review. We continue to consider and reflect upon the long-term plans for PHELC. We will keep you updated.
Second university based seminar
PHELC is collaborating with our Dublin City University colleagues in the Teaching Enhancement Unit to facilitate our second university-based seminar within which DCU colleagues will have an opportunity share practice and/or research relating to large class pedagogy. If you are a staff member teaching large classes (100+) in DCU please refer to the Call for Abstracts for details regarding presentations. While this seminar is only available to DCU staff, outputs will be made available on this website afterwards in line with our open access policy. The seminar takes place on 4th December, Glasnevin Campus.
Seventh PHELC international symposium
Following our review of PHELC, we have decided to run the international symposium every second year. The next symposium will take place online on Friday 9th June 2026. Details will be provided soon on this website.
Twitter - #PHELC26 @PHELCprofessors
The trend towards massification in higher education has resulted inter alia in the proliferation of large classes. However, there is no consensus on what constitutes ‘large’ (Kerr, 2011). The purpose of this symposium is to move the emphasis away from the contested term ‘large’ class to focus instead on the nature of teaching, learning and assessment in this context regardless of what is perceived as ‘large’. The aim of the symposium is to identify pedagogical and assessment possibilities which are appropriate for large classes and which maximise student learning, engagement and participation in that context. As such this symposium responds to recent calls for a pedagogical rather than a numerical focus to the debate (Prosser & Trigwell, 2014).
The impetus for developing the symposium had its genesis in the experience of the two convenors who have taught large university classes for many years (see below for our details). The first two PHELC symposia were held in conjunction with the Higher Education Advances (HEAd) Conference, València in 2019 and again, virtually in 2020. The support and encouragement of the HEAd Conference committee was instrumental in enabling us to develop PHELC as an event in its own right and the third PHELC symposium was held independently, online in June 2021. We remain indebted to our Spanish friends for their guidance and expertise.
The annual symposium is the main event on the PHELC calendar. However, in 2021, we branched out to develop other events. Our first seminar was held in December 2021 which allowed large class teachers from two universities to share experience and expertise in teaching large classes,
As outlined above, a second seminar will be held for Dublin City University staff on 6th December 2025
Dr. Ann Marie Farrell is Assistant Professor in the School of Inclusive and Special Education, Institute of Education, Dublin City University. She works on a range of under- and post-graduate teacher education programmes. Classes on some of these programmes are considered 'large' i.e. 100 up to 430 students. Click here for full profile.
Dr. Anna Logan is Acting Dean of the Institute of Education, Dublin City University. Previously, she was a member of staff of the School of Inclusive and Special Education where she taught across seven undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education programmes up to and including doctoral programmes as well as being Deputy Dean of the IoE. Anna has conducted, published and presented research relating to many aspects of higher education. Click here for full profile.