Chapter 1 Classroom management: Teaching mixed-ability classes

2.2. Teaching a Mixed Level Disparate Class. What do you do when your class is divided between majors who easily master the material and non-majors who continually struggle? Or when you see that a few students find the material easy, are bored, and yearn to be challenged, while some still just aren't “getting it” despite your best efforts? Where should the level of content in the class be set? Should it be the same for all students, or individually customized?
In almost any course you can have students that come from a multitude of academic backgrounds, divisions (upper vs. lower), preparation, majors and interests. For courses without prerequisites or those that attract students from many disciplines, such as gateway courses, effectively teaching all students can be challenging. At UC Berkeley, many faculty aim lectures at the upper-middle portion of the class, although this varies widely across campus. Regardless of where a course is “aimed,” there are many strategies that can be implemented to help teach a disparate class. The following is a list of considerations that should be made when teaching a class, and guiding practices for implementing your chosen pedagogy:

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  Do Students Need To Have a Pre-Determined Baseline of Knowledge For Your Course?
  
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  How Much Variety Can You Provide In Your Teaching and Assessments?
  
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  Are You Aware Of Your Students’ Potentially Disparate Goals?
  
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  Can You Leverage Group Work?
  
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  Some Specific Examples of How Berkeley Faculty Teach Mixed Level/Disparate Classes...
  

An important consideration for each course that you teach is whether you want or need students to have a certain baseline of knowledge, skills or background information for them to be successful in the course. Depending on the type of course and its structure, students with very diverse backgrounds may foster a great collaborative environment with diverse perspectives, but a great discrepancy in background knowledge may be more indicative of some students not having the necessary preparation for the course. Determine if your course necessitates some kind of pre-requisites for students to be adequately prepared for the course. Even if pre-requisites are not required to enroll, as is the case for many Berkeley courses, you can indicate them as suggestions on the syllabus to help students decide if they are ready for the course and have the background necessary to be successful in achieving the course goals.
On the first day of class, establish a baseline of knowledge that is required to succeed in your course. This may be in the form of a quiz that informs you about the makeup of your students, or may be in the form of a checklist that you give students to which they can self-assess their preparation for this particular course. For those students who remain in the course and realize they may be lacking in preparation, you can provide additional resources like a supplemental reading list (which could be informed by the results of the quiz) that students can utilize to address any areas of weakness (and will also recognize that they are expected to have previously have attained this knowledge and it will not be covered in class). Advanced supplemental enrichment activities and materials can also be used to engage the top quarter of the class, while the bottom quarter may rely more on instructor office hours and GSIs. See Dr. Azhar’s excellent examples of how he utilizes supplementary materials in his class.
Differential instruction is the pedagogy of providing myriad types of instruction to students with different learning needs. It is not about creating a tailored teaching plan for each student, but reflects an acknowledgement that all of the students in the classroom will not all learn in the same way. Implementing a variety of teaching styles, types of technology, assessment types and levels of both assessment and learning outcomes is a standard, effective teaching methodology. The question is not so much whether to provide this variety, but how much variety is necessary and how much variety will be effective in your particular course. Consider your teaching style, the diversity and needs of your students, and the structure of the course.
Provide students with a variety of formative and summative assessments. Providing a variety of types of assessments (participation marks, papers, lab reports, exams, group projects) allows students who excel at one particular type to demonstrate their strength. Providing a variety of question types and multiple levels of assessment (see Bloom’s Taxonomy) allows students to demonstrate their abilities to not only recall and summarize, but also synthesize, analyze and evaluate. Finally, using different methods of actual teaching, whether through active learning, different multimedia and technology and changing between lectures, seminars and group work (whether graded or not) allows you to access all learner types and allows different ways for students to approach or contextualize the driving questions of the course and discipline. As Dr. Smart discusses below, these all tie back into your course design and your course can be set up to provide this variety by employing different levels of learning outcomes.
Note that this consideration is likely more necessary for large, survey classes and less so at the upper division, specialized classes, and is more a consideration for your sanity, as opposed to how you operate your classroom! Especially in freshmen gateway classes, students enroll with a number of goals, ranging from passing the course to fulfill a requirement, to wanting to excel and specialize in this subject for their undergraduate degree. As such, the harsh reality is that students’ goals for themselves in terms of how much they want to learn and understand, and the amount of effort they are willing to put into your class may vary quite a bit.
One of the best ways to tackle a class with students who have disparate learning goals is to teach by layering levels of knowledge, and as mentioned previously, to employ multiple levels of assessment (see Bloom’s Taxonomy). This allows students to understand the basics and earn a passing grade in the course, without necessarily understanding all of the complexities which would be required to earn a high grade. If you are not sure what their goals are, ask them! This can be anonymous or just with a general question in class; you may be surprised as to how honest they will be with you!
One of the best ways to tackle your own sanity when teaching this kind of course is to produce one histogram of individual assignment grades for the entire class, and one histogram for only those students who are taking the course for numerical grades and not taking the course on a pass/no pass basis. Any disparity between the partial class and entire class histograms will be a reflection of students with different goals in the class. These distributions of grades give a more accurate picture to both you and your students of how the students are performing in the class in relation to their peer group. Below, Dr. Wallace discusses how he approaches teaching a class composed of students with disparate learning goals.
When implemented well, group work can unify a disparate class through working in teams of students who each bring a different skill set and knowledge to the group. Team-based learning is most successful when the project is designed specifically to capitalize on the strengths of those participating in the project, and thus the question is, can you develop projects within your class that can be successful within the parameters of your students’ knowledge and backgrounds?
Plan and give careful thought as to what your proposed learning outcomes are for your group project. Is it going to be graded? Will everybody in the group get the same grade or will it differ depending on participation and contribution to the project (and will this be self or peer-evaluated)? For an example of how teamwork by students with different knowledge and academic backgrounds can be very successful and an excellent learning opportunity, see Dr. Alexander’s discussion of team projects in her class at the Energy Institute at Haas. For an example of some of the difficulties of implementing group projects, read about Dr. Wallace’s experiences.

CONCLUSION:

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