Even (and especially) time-pressed instructors with large classes can foster meaningful relationships and interactions, resulting in powerful and long-lasting effects for students.

The four guiding principles of Relationship-Rich Education are:

• All students must experience genuine welcome and deep care.
• Relationships are a powerful means to inspire all students to learn.
• All students must develop webs of significant relationships.
• All students need meaningful relationships to help them—and to challenge them—to explore the big questions of their lives.

Realization #3: It Is Important to Be on the Same Team as My Students

One of the most striking things I have experienced as an undergraduate biology educator is the assumption that instructors and students play opposing and sometimes adversarial roles. While I had experience in cultivating a relationship that put me on the same side as my students in classrooms of fewer than 50 students, I had sincere concerns about whether I could accomplish this with ∼300 people sitting down in a room and me generally standing up. Even the body language of the situation put us in roles that I wanted to change. Reflections from students suggested that, even in a large class, we could cultivate a teaching and learning partnership where we were on the same side.

• The Alphabet Game: Students think of a discipline-specific concept/theory that starts with the letter A, the letter B, etc. until they reach they end of the alphabet (e.g., “What Do Sociologists Study?”). A variation would be to see how far down the alphabet the groups can get in 5 minutes. The instructor follows up with the large class. (Eggleston & Smith)
• Collaborative Response: The instructor poses a question to the class and invites responses by a show of hands or via an online immediate response tool (e.g., Clickers, Poll Everywhere). After providing their individual response students discuss the question in small groups. Each small group develops a group response which is then shared or submitted along with all individual responses.
• Thought Provoking Questions: The instructor poses a thought-provoking, “yes or no” debatable question to which students respond individually and then discuss in groups of 2-4 (e.g., Food banks should be discontinued because they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.) The instructor follows up with a large group discussion. This can also be done in the large class with immediate response tools (e.g., Clickers, Poll Everywhere).

• Remove barriers to learning by intentionally designing first week activities that orient and engage students in the course, and familiarize them with the course elements
• Create a short Instructor Welcome video to introduce yourself and share why you are excited to participate in the course community. Share your passion about the course. Tell students why you chose the field. Talk about the course learning goals. Suggest strategies for academic success.
• Create a short Course Tour video. Be sure to use the Student View setting when you record your screen capture of the course. Walk students through the course so they understand the organization and why you designed the course the way you did. End by telling students what to do first to get started in their learning experience.

Foster Collaboration and Communication

• Spend time at the beginning of the semester discussing common goals and learning outcomes for the course. Ask the team for input on course design, learning activities, or policies.
• Establish regular meeting times and communication channels with the teaching team throughout the semester. Ask team members to block off time on their calendars for meetings, exam proctoring, and for grading. Let people know about grading deadlines at the beginning of the semester.
• Spend time during the first week of class introducing the teaching team to your students and highlighting the strengths that they bring to the course (e.g., research specializations or experiences). Consider providing photos and short bios, which can be posted on Canvas or included in the syllabus.
• Let students know the appropriate contact person for different types of questions. For large courses, consider setting up a course email account.
• Ask for frequent feedback from team members, or set up a system for them to let you know what is going well in the course, what students are confused about, or concerns about specific students; often they may be aware of issues with students that need to come to the attention of the team.