Dr. Jesiek, Yuxiang, and I would like to know your opinion about expanding this learning community to more students next year. We're exploring two models. The first one involves increasing the size from our current 30 to 45 and keeping the same format. The second involves increasing the size to ~120 students and utilizing the I2R lab in the basement of ARMS and putting students in groups to maintain the "community" sense.
We're still talking about this and weighing the pros and cons. Please let us know if you have any thoughts about this, positive or negative, or different concepts.
We'll take a couple minutes in class on Monday for your feedback , or you are encouraged to make comments here on the main page to this post.
Thanks for your input!
We're still talking about this and weighing the pros and cons. Please let us know if you have any thoughts about this, positive or negative, or different concepts.
We'll take a couple minutes in class on Monday for your feedback , or you are encouraged to make comments here on the main page to this post.
Thanks for your input!
I like the second option better. I think it would be a good thing to have one big group meetings and smaller section meetings. We could have the big group meetings on Monday so everybody can meet each other and find out what is going on. We can then have the smaller meetings of 10 latter on Monday or on Tuesday to meet the more intimate groups. These groups could be like teams and compete against each other in different things. We could have different competitions like design competitions and videogame tournament. If we had the two level process we could have a more intimate groups at the same time also having friendly competitions.
ReplyDeleteI like the first option more than the second one. I think it is nice format with small student strength in class room. But few changes in this format can make this format even more exciting. In this format some more learning communities events and some workshops can be organized to increase the interactions between the students.
ReplyDeleteI like the first option better. The smaller the class is, the easier it would be to interact and get to know the other students. Having the smaller group makes it easier to get the "community" feeling. You see the same faces and names every day. Im afraid if you would expand it to 120 students you would lose that close-knit community concept. If you would like to consider expanding to that many students, one idea is to have a learning community with 120 students, but divide it into sub-communities of around 30 students. That way you can use the same classroom format you have now and keep the community feel, but you will also be expanding to more students. Also you could do large community events every once in a while where all the sub-communities get together.
ReplyDeleteI like the first one. The smaller, the better. Having 30-45 students in class makes it easier for a student to interact with others. At present with this small strength in my class, at least I know everyone by their names. I tend to interact with people. Talk to them about their cultures. In a class of 120 students, a student might lose interest. Rather everyone would start finding making groups with people only of their clan.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be better, to stick with smaller classes, as it keeps that "community" feeling.
ReplyDeleteAs First Year Engineering students, we have most of our classes in lecture halls, where the learning is very impersonal. Despite the number of students, most of the students are isolated since most of the people around them are strangers or to the very least simple acquaintances. The learning community gives student more of a chance to interact with their teacher and their classmates. We feel a part of a group.
If ENGR 103 became a class of more than 100 students, the class would lose its community feel, and its uniqueness among other classes at Purdue.
ENGR 103 could expand to 120 students and maintain its current qualities, if sub-communities of maybe 30-40 students are made.
I like the first model. Keeping the class small will keep the “community” feeling. In a class with 120 students, it is very likely that a person will not be interested in the class. Having a small class is also a nice change from the large lecture classes and it is easier to get to know everyone.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm more in favor of the first option. Increasing the class size from around 30 to 45 would give more students the opportunity to get involved in a learning community (which is a great thing!) while keeping the class size small enough to maintain the 'community' feeling.
ReplyDeleteExpanding the class to a 100+ students and grouping them would not be a good idea in my opinion as the class would then lose it's uniqueness and become just like ENGR 13100.
I think I would be an advocate of the first option. Part of what makes this community so effective in helping freshman transition into the college setting is having a few times a week when we meet in smaller classes, much like those experienced in high school with the same group of kids, and I believe it would loose this element if we transferred into a bigger room/community of 100+ students, as it would make it much less 'personable,' and especially because it seems that it would rule out all of the 'get to know you' things that we did towards the beginning of the semester that did a great job of breaking the ice and helping us get to know eachother.
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