Collection

Cultivating Relationships in Large-Enrollment Courses

Demonstrating care, empowering TAs, and cultivating opportunities for peer connections are just a few ways that relationships show up in your large enrollment courses. Use these resources for a clearer view on how to make the most of human interactions in large courses.

Instructional Settings

Updated: June 2025

Website

How Relationships Are The Core of Teaching

A brief video and accompanying resources describe relationship-rich education, its benefits, and approaches to make classrooms into relationship-rich spaces.

Carleton University Teaching and Learning Services

Article

An Educator's Realizations When Teaching a Large Enrollment Course

An experienced instructor shifts to large-enrollment teaching and records her lessons learned. This reflective piece shares practical advice for teaching 300+ students with appropriate attention to instructional context. Spoiler: it involves relationships.

CBE: Life Sciences Education

Website

Building Community in Large Classes

This website offers quick, scalable activities that can help build relationships by increasing student interactions at three levels: student-to-student, student-to-instructor, and student-to-content.

University of Waterloo Centre for Teaching Excellence

Website

Demonstrating Care in Large Enrollment

This short list of recommendations focuses on the structural or planned ways that we can demonstrate care in large enrollment (e.g., through design and communication) and help students see us instructors as humans early on.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Transformative Teaching

Website

Build Relationships With Your TAs and Teaching Team

This webpage gives practical advice for coordinating your teaching team, especially Teaching Assistants. It includes suggestions for fostering communication, clear expectations, and mentoring.

Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation

Want to recommend a resource to add to this collection? Send us an email.