University Massification and Teaching Non-Traditional University Students

Abstract

Professor James feels his first lecture to his business class was a disaster. Teaching has always come easy to him, until today. Professor James recently moved from a small private university to this large public university. The students in his previous school were quite homogeneous. They came to him with similar backgrounds, similar knowledge and his class sizes were never more than forty students. Today was his first experience at this new university. One-hundred and fifty first-year students were enrolled in his class and they were anything but homogeneous. First, while many students were seventeen years, not all of them were. In fact, some students were clearly ‘mature’. There seemed to be at least ten students over the age of thirty. Second, prior to the class, the center for students with disabilities had emailed him a list of students who they were assisting. The list had seven student names on it. He had never taught students with disabilities before and wondered if he was supposed to modify his course for them. Third, after class several students came to his office hours. In conversation with these students he learned that some of these students were the first in their families to go to university. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.