Teaching multiple graduate sections with large class sizes: panel discussion

This panel discussion will focus on how educators manage multiple sections with large class sizes (~60) to achieve student learning outcomes. Graduate enrollment has tripled in the fall 2021 semester in several universities within the US. It is challenging for educators to focus on every student in a large section every day. The discussion looks at various teaching practices and approaches that can help students learn programming skills in this environment. The panel also addresses the assessment and evaluation strategies for multiple large sections. We will look at how we managed the technical performance issues in the Canvas learning management system when 300 students tried to take an exam at the same time. In addition, classroom engagement was encouraged through small group discussions and collaborations using the GitHub version control system with approximately 60 pull requests per section per day. Each student provided a unique contribution to the source code where the whole class was working on a large project. While it has several challenges, students learned to communicate with others to push their code. The recommendations from this panel will help educators to teach and modify their pedagogy for large sections without compromising the necessary competencies.