Design Considerations for Large-Enrollment Online Courses

What Research Says

While the meaning of large-enrollment class varies from college to college, from discipline to disciple, and even from one faculty to another, many of the reviewed papers are using the following definition that centers on the student success as the main benchmark:

"Any class where the numbers of students pose both perceived and real challenges in the delivery of quality and equal learning opportunities to students" (Maringe & Sing, 2014, p. 763).

Interestingly, there is not a lot of research on the effect of class size in online courses (Lowenthal, et al., 2019). The available research provides mixed results:

Cavanaugh (2005) found that adding a single student to an online course increased instruction time dramatically.
Another study found that increasing the class size by ten percent or even more doesn't significantly affect student grades, enrollment in the next term, or credits attempted (Bettinger, Doss, Loeb, Rogers, and Taylor, 2017). Please note that the course size in this study was considered to be regular if it had 31 students, so the increase by 10% brought the enrollment to 34 students.
Taft, Perkowski, & Martin (2011) suggested that faculty workload expands with the number of students and that it is hard to achieve positive student outcomes while maintaining faculty workload in large-enrollment online courses.

What's Next?

While the research on the effects of class size in online courses is incomplete and inconclusive, there are some helpful tools and strategies to help us make the decisions about the large-enrollment courses and guide us through the design of these courses. For instance, Taft, Kesten, & El-Banna (2019) created Analytical Framework for Online Course Enrollment Numbers for the recommendation of the enrollment size based on the learning needs and pedagogical strategies. You can read One Size Does Not Fit All: Toward an Evidence-Based Framework for Determining Online Course Enrollment Sizes in Higher Education online or download the Table "Recommended Student Enrollment Sizes" by clicking on the image on the right.

There are also well-documented strategies that can be implemented to minimize the challenges of the large-enrollment courses and improve faculty and student's overall learning experience and outcomes.

Screenshot of a table with Framework written over it

Strategies to Reduce Workload and Achieve Positive Student Outcomes in Large-Enrollment Online Courses

Some of the common challenges that arise in large-enrollment courses are increased grading workload for instructors, difficulty with facilitation of meaningful communication, managing instructor-presence, and providing timely feedback to students. Some of the strategies to address these challenges include the importance of establishing clear course structure, having understandable instructions and deadlines, designing with consistency, and applying some other techniques such as group discussions, protocol-based discussion, or peer-reviewed assignments (Xing, 2019; Semingson & Owens, 2017; Lowenthal, et al., 2019; Trammell, LaForge, 2017).

Course Design

Course design considerations - many course design best practices are applicable to an online course of any size. For instance, "chunking" course work into smaller unites (modules) helps students manage their work (Elison-Bowers, 2011); having consistency across the course shells eases the burden for instructors and also minimizes confusion for the students (Trammell & LaForge, 2017); having a variety of learning activities keeps the course interesting but the presentation of the content should be consistent throughout the course (Trammell & LaForge, 2017); having clear and consistent deadlines to prevent students' confusion (Trammell & LaForge, 2017).
Instructor presence- to help build trust with the students, include instructor page where his/her photo and bio can be added. Consider creating a welcome video and other lecture videos throughout the semester to increase student respect for the instructor and their sense of connectedness (Trammell & LaForge, 2017).
Discussions - establish clear ground rules and netiquette for the discussion participation. Consider having discussions grade to account for 10 to 20% of the students' final grade to maximize student participation (Trammell & LaForge, 2017). Utilize different discussion response techniques such as leaving summary responses or not participating at all and instead posting an announcement with the two or three favorite ideas (Lake, 2018).
Quizzes and Exams - use quizzes whenever an assignment can be adequately replaced by a well-constructed quiz or consider dividing the assignment into two parts, quiz for checking students' understanding of the topic and assignment for reflection (Lake, 2018). Build in feedback for all the quiz questions and use questions that require synthesis of multiple ideas (Lake, 2018).
Self-tests - provide students with ungraded self-tests that will guide them through the content and provide immediate feedback (Elison-Bowers, 2011).
Templates and worksheets - the use of templates for open-ended assignments will help students structure their response and address all the requirements. This technique would also help streamline assignment grading (Lake, 2018).
Rubrics - use rubrics to communicate assignment requirements and to streamline assignment grading while providing specific feedback (Trammell & LaForge, 2017).
Course policies - include clear course policies to reduce the workload as students will have fewer questions as they progress through the course.

Course Communication

Grading expectation - communicate the grading differences in large-enrollment courses. Some assignments may take longer to grade or the instructor may not answer to all the posts in the discussion forum or not post at all. Explaining these expectations up-front would lead to better student experiences (Lake, 2018).
Frequently Asked Questions page - having Frequently Asked Questions page can help decrease student confusion and emails to instructor (Trammell & LaForge, 2017.)
Communication templates - communication templates for emails and announcements can help instructors with their time management and also can help increase simulated presence (Lowenthal, et al., 2019)
Frequent reminders - announcement can be used to provide reminders about the due dates, success tips for students for tasks/assignments due, and encouragement to help them stay on task (Semingson & Owens, 2017)
Mass marketing approach or direct mass e-mailing - this approach can be used to personalize emails in a large-enrollment courses. For instance, if you need to send a feedback on the scores from the exam, you can send one message praising students who are scored above a certain grade and bcc them and another email to the students who scored lower and need more feedback and bbc them, e.g. "I noticed you are not doing as well on the exams as you might like. Let me see if I can help. Some students have told me that they find [whatever you want to suggest] to be an effective way to study for my online exams." (Berry, 2009)

Other Tools and Techniques

Groups - section students into smaller groups in large-enrollment courses to achieve higher interactivity (Chen, Ddeenoyelles, Patton, & Zydney, 2017). Hew and Cheung (2011) indicate that the group size of 10 people increases the level of knowledge construction, while Loder (2018) suggests that 20-30 participants in each discussion group helps to create focused conversations with enough variety of perspectives. For projects, Loder (2018) suggests creating groups with 5-6 participants in each.
Protocol-based discussions - one study found that protocol-based discussions helped to distribute CoI presences more evenly than non-protocol discussions in large-enrollment online course. Protocol-based discussion is a discussion that "provides learners with a structured process for giving and receiving a feedback, or interactive within a discussion toward a particular goal" (2018). Protocol-based discussion also helps to share responsibility of the facilitation between the instructor and students, thus enabling the instructor to have more time on diagnosing misconceptions and injecting knowledge (Chen, Ddeenoyelles, Patton, & Zydney, 2017).
Study Buddy Notes (SBNs) - Study Budy Notes can be used to guide students through the content. The initial idea of SBNs came to Berr (2009) when he observed that his PowerPoints caused confusion in his large-enrollment online courses. He converted them into the notes that are written as if the instructor is sitting with the student and giving the advice on how and what to study. The 40-50 chapter may have 3-4 page SBN . This approach puts instructor in the role of the mentor or facilitator rather than an information provider (Berry, 2009). SBN Example.
Peer Review - peer review of assignments can be used to provide formative feedback and help students stay engaged in a large-enrollment course (Semingson & Owens, 2017). For peer review assignments to be successful, students will need to have clear guidelines and rubric.
E-Portfolios - e-portfolios in large-enrollment courses would allow flexibility and variety in course assignments and can also help minimize weekly grading while keeping students engaged throughout the semester (Trammell & LaForge, 2017).

References:

Berry, R. W. (2009). Meeting the challenges of teaching large online classes: Shifting to a learner-focus. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 5(1), 176-182.
Bettinger, E., Doss, C., Loeb, S., Rogers, A., & Taylor, E. (2017). The effects of class size in online college courses: Experimental evidence. Economics of Education Review, 58,68–85. doi:10.1016/j. econedurev.2017.03.006
Cavanaugh, J. (2005). Teaching online–A time comparison. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 8(1). Retrieved from https://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring81/cava naugh81.htm
Chen, B., Denoyelles, A., Patton, K., & Zydney, J. (2017). Creating a Community of Inquiry in large-enrollment online courses: An exploratory study on the effect of protocols within online discussions. Online Learning, 21(1), 165-188.
Elison-Bowers, P., Sand, J., Barlow, M. R., & Wing, T. J. (2011). Strategies for managing large online classes. The International Journal of Learning.
Gavassa, S., Benabentos, R., Kravec, M., Collins, T., & Eddy, S. (2019). Closing the Achievement Gap in a Large Introductory Course by Balancing Reduced In-Person Contact with Increased Course Structure. CBE - Life Sciences Education, 18(1).
Lake, B. (2019, July 18). Best Practices for Large-Enrollment Online Courses, Part I: Managing student expectations, leveraging quizzes, and reducing grading load. Retrieved from https://teachonline.asu.edu/2018/09/best-practices-for-large-enrollment-courses-in-canvas/
Loder, M. (2019, September 5). Best Practices for Large-Enrollment Online Courses, Part 2: Managing groups, peer review, and other peer-to-peer interactions. Retrieved from https://teachonline.asu.edu/2018/10/best-practices-for-large-enrollment-online-courses-part-2-managing-groups-peer-review-and-other-peer-to-peer-interactions/
Lowenthal, P. R., Nyland, R., Jung, E., Dunlap, J. C., & Kepka, J. (2019). Does Class Size Matter? An Exploration into Faculty Perceptions of Teaching High-Enrollment Online Courses. American Journal of Distance Education, 33(3), 152–168
Felix Maringe, & Nevensha Sing. (2014). Teaching large classes in an increasingly internationalising higher education environment: pedagogical, quality and equity issues. Higher Education, 67(6), 761.
Protocols = Better Online Discussions. (2018, January 29). Retrieved from https://excellentonlineteaching.com/protocols-better-online-discussions/
Semingson, P., & Owens, D. (2017, October). Scaling up E-learning: Best Practices for Teaching Online Classes with a Large Enrollment. In E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (pp. 472-476). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Taft, S., Perkowski, T., & Martin, L. (2011). A framework for evaluating class size in online education.Quarterly Review of Distance Education,12(3), 181–197.
Taft, S., Kesten, K., & El-Banna, M. (2019). One Size Does Not Fit All: Toward an Evidence-Based Framework for Determining Online Course Enrollment Sizes in Higher Education. Online Learning, 23(3). doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.24059/olj.v23i3.1534
Trammell, B. A., & LaForge, C. (2017). Common challenges for instructors in large online courses: Strategies to mitigate student and instructor frustration. Journal of Educators Online, 14(1), n1.
Xing, W. (n.d.). Exploring the influences of MOOC design features on student performance and persistence. DISTANCE EDUCATION, 40(1), 98–113. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1080/01587919.2018.1553560