On November 4, 2021, The Teaching Innovation Center hosted a workshop titled “Scale Up: Successful High Enrollment Courses”. The “Scale UP” series focuses on expanding access in undergraduate programs (UP= undergraduate programs). The workshop featured explorations of online and immersion coursework “to scale”, the direction of the growth in the School of Life Sciences, and insights from an EdPlus instructional design team specializing in high enrollment courses. Speakers included: Kate MacCord , PhD, Instructor, SOLS Zachary Shaffer , PhD, Lecturer, SOLS Jill Roter , Principle Instructional Designer, EdPlus Dee Mullins , Instructional Designer, EdPlus Scot Schoenborn , Director of Academic Services SOLS Lenora Ott , Instructional Designer, Teaching Innovation Center What is “scale”? and what is High Enrollment? You may hear the term high enrollment often at ASU and it can mean different things to different people. It might be some magic number at which an instructor is given TA supp...

When I work with faculty that teach immersion (students in the classroom) many of them are worried that if they teach online or hybrid they will lose what they feel is the cornerstone of the classroom experience: collaborative discussion. And it’s true, for many years we’ve been constrained by a model created in old-style internet forums using threads and responses. At first, they were exciting (maybe), but for many of us they’ve grown stale and the conversations contrived….or non-existent. But we shouldn’t abandon hope that online asynchronous discussion is possible and important. If anything, the rise of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Discord have shown us that not only are many of our students capable of meaningful asynchronous interaction, but a large part of their social existence depends on it. So why don’t we have meaningful conversations in our own asynchronous classroom discussions? Why do students “go behind our backs” to create a Discord? (Will they please let...