More students, more solutions: Faculty rise to meet growing enrollment

As the University of Iowa welcomed another large first-year class this fall, faculty across campus have adapted to ensure that every student receives the classroom support they need.

In August, the UI welcomed its second-largest first-year class in history with 5,561 students, following another large cohort of 5,208 in fall 2024. With more students enrolling in popular and introductory courses, instructors are adjusting their teaching methods and course structures and drawing on university resources.

"With one of the largest first-year classes in our history, our faculty are going above and beyond to ensure every student has access to an excellent education and the support needed to thrive," says Kevin Kregel, executive vice president and provost. "We are deeply grateful for the time, energy, and care our faculty members bring to the classroom."

In the Tippie College of Business, Kristina Gavin Bigsby, director of undergraduate studies and associate professor of instruction, teaches Foundations of Business Analytics, which reached a record 901 students this fall - more than 300 students larger than two years ago.

"Since joining the faculty in 2018, I have consistently taught medium-size courses of about 100 to 150 students," Bigsby says. "So, 901 students can only be described as a different beast. I have to delegate more responsibility to my teaching assistants and rely on the fact that they are the ones who know the students and their individual situations best because they see them in smaller class settings."

To manage the growth, the course now includes three lecture sections, 20 discussion sections, 10 teaching assistants, and a course coordinator who helps with administrative tasks, such as scheduling quiz makeups and publishing grades. But even with others helping run the course, Bigsby says she still prioritizes engaging with students and developing a curriculum to help them thrive.

"For everyone who visits office hours, comes up after a class to ask a question, or drops me an email, I'm committed to giving them the same level of individual attention that I did when I had 80% fewer students," she says. "No matter the class size, I show my students my care for them and their learning experience through the effort and time that I put into the course design and materials. Every slide, every dataset, and every example is made by me with the goal of making the course both fun and rigorous."

In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' Department of Mathematics, College Algebra now serves nearly 780 students across 22 sections, an increase from the usual 18 to 20 sections. Cynthia Farthing, director of undergraduate studies and associate professor of instruction, coordinates weekly meetings with all 22 instructors to discuss challenges and teaching strategies.

"Instructors use a variety of methods depending on what they and their students are comfortable with, but common activities include think-pair-share, asking students to show and explain their solutions on the board to others, splitting exercises among students, and having students explain their problem to the other groups," Farthing says. "Instructors will often guide the class through a problem by exampling certain steps and asking students what the next step should be."

College Algebra was redesigned over the past few years for greater consistency between sections and increased interaction.

"We also made this course more interactive," Farthing says. "Previously, students spent most of the class time working through online modules and seeking help from the instructor when they had questions. When we redesigned the course, we moved the online modules to homework and created a worksheet for each day of class consisting of examples that instructors guide students through and exercises that students work through on their own or in small groups."

Florence Williams, assistant professor of chemistry, teaches General Chemistry II, a course that's grown each year since Williams began teaching it in 2021. The course consists of a three-times-a-week lecture and a weekly discussion section.

"When it's a very large course, it's really important to have a lot of structure to the course so it's easy for students to navigate," Williams says. "We use educational scaffolding where problem sets aren't just the classic example questions you would see in exams. We guide the students through the process of how to complete a problem. Then later, we provide less scaffolding so the students can self-learn and self-guide to see if they can do it on their own."

Williams also participated in the Hawkeye Introductory Course Initiative, a P3-funded retreat and workshop designed to help instructors of large introductory courses share ideas and best practices. Through the initiative, she implemented a tracking program that allows her to see how each student interacts with online lectures and worksheets posted in ICON.

"There was a student who wasn't doing as well as she wanted to even though she put a lot of time into her work," Williams says. "I was able to look online and see she had a lot of interaction with the materials on ICON, but she was working so far ahead of where we were in the lecture that she was making mistakes. She would have to unlearn those mistakes before she relearned the material in class. I never would have been able to quickly assess that without that platform."

General Chemistry II is also one of the UI's courses that uses Learning Assistants (LAs) - undergraduate students who previously succeeded in the course and help students during lectures - and Supplemental Instruction (SI) - peer-facilitated group study sessions - to provide students with additional academic support.

Stephanie Preschel, assistant dean for University College, says the Office of Student Learning supports both SI and LA programs for high-enrollment and introductory courses, particularly those taken by first- and second-year students. This semester, staff focused on ensuring that there were enough student LAs to maintain strong support by hiring additional LAs for chemistry courses over the summer.

"Learning in college is typically different than a student's previous learning experience, and most students have not been in a large classroom setting until they get to Iowa," Preschel says. "It is up to us to provide resources and support to help students in their learning process. We want every student at Iowa to succeed and meet their academic goals, and utilizing academic support is one strategy to get there."