The Pedagogy for Higher Education Large Classes (PHELC) community collection includes papers which have been peer reviewed and accepted for inclusion in a PHELC workshop or symposium. Full reports of the proceedings of PHELC are also included in the collection.
The PHELC Community Collection shares insights into teaching large classes from an international evidence-based, higher education practice perspective. The trend towards massification in higher education has resulted inter alia in the proliferation of large classes. Ironically, alongside that trend is the belief that teaching and learning in large class contexts is problematic (Cuseo, 2007). PHELC seeks to move the emphasis away from the contested term ‘large’ class and move instead to focusing on the nature of teaching, learning and assessment in this context regardless of what is perceived as ‘large’ in order to identify pedagogical and assessment possibilities which are appropriate for large classes and which maximise student learning, engagement and participation in that context. As such PHELC responds to recent calls for a pedagogical rather than a numerical focus to the debate (Prosser & Trigwell, 2014).