Pedagogy for Higher Education Large Classes (PHELC)

Welcome to the PHELC website. PHELC aims to support higher education professors who teach large classes

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/phelc/

PHELC logo designed by Emma Farragher, Institute of Education, Dublin City University

7th PHELC international symposium

Thanks to all who attended and contributed to the PHELC26 Symposium on Friday 12 June, 2026. In particular, huge gratitude to our keynote speaker, Prof David Boud, who spoke about designing feedback at scale. His keynote address provoked the PHELC audience to consider current practices and potential for future changes in how we consider large class cohorts and the importance of providing meaningful feedback especially in that context.

All papers, proceedings and presentations from PHELC26 will be made available on the 'Published Symposia Proceedings' tab of this website before September.

Our next international symposium will take place in May or June, 2028. We hope to engage with a smaller project in 2027, details of which will be published in due course.

NEWS: Congratulations to two of our #PHELC26 Committee Members, Emma Farragher & Yalemisew Abgaz, who were awarded the President's Awards for Teaching Excellence in Dublin City University on 21 May 2026. See below for details

Keynote Speaker PHELC26

David Boud is Deakin Distinguished Professor and Foundation Director of the Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning at Deakin University, Australia. He is also Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Design and Society at the University of Technology Sydney. He has published extensively on teaching, learning and assessment in higher and professional education. He has been a pioneer in developing learning-centred approaches to teaching and in new conceptions of assessment and feedback. In recent years he has focused on research on assessment and feedback, and he has been influential in changing ideas in this area, for example, on self-assessment, sustainable assessment, the development of students’ evaluative judgement and new perspectives on feedback and feedback literacy. He is one of the most highly cited scholars in the world in the field of higher education with more than 20 publications having more than 1,000 citations and a Google Scholar h-index of 119. David's keynote address will focus on Feedback at Scale.

Full profile: https://experts.deakin.edu.au/28619-david-boud/about

Co-founders and Joint Committee Chairs

Dr. Ann Marie Farrell

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

Dr. Anna Logan is Acting Interim 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.

PHELC26 Organising Committee

For the first six symposia, we relied on the goodwill and generosity of our DCU colleagues to enable us to run the PHELC symposia on the day of the event especially. However, this year, we (Anna & Ann Marie) felt it would be preferable to establish a formal committee to manage PHELC26. We reached out to DCU colleagues who have been supportive of PHELC over the years. Going forward, we hope this will be the first step in establishing PHELC as an important network in the higher education context, ensuring its focus on supporting and celebrating the work of those working with large classes.

Congratulations to Emma who won the DCU President's Award for Teaching Excellence: New Lecturer Category

Congratulations to Yalemisew who won the DCU President's Award for Teaching Excellence: Overall Winner

Yalemisew will present his award winning work at #PHELC26

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