Are large university freshman lecture hall class size over 100 students common? My son is ready to commit. His likely choice school announced that 95% of classes will be live, but extra large lecture halls will be virtual. The college has since defined large as 100 students. I can’t get a sense of the size of 100 people But I am worried b/c I think that all 1st semester classes at a big university lecture hall (intro courses, required general ed) will be huge. Even within his major of comp science, the 1st year classes might be big (including math like Calculus A). I don’t want all of his classes to be virtual.
Which school?
You can check to see if the school has publicly accessible online class schedules, and whether they give some indication of class size for each specific course. At many schools, you can easily find this information.
At some schools where class size is not listed in the class schedules, you may be able to find out the room capacity for the listed classrooms on some other part of the school web site.
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What college? At some state flagships lecture halls can hold 700 students or more. There should be a course list on line that shows the max enrolment for each class.
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That’s a good suggestion and I had been trying to look at the course registration for Fall 2021, but it is not up yet. I was able to find courses for Spring 2021, but that’s not really accurate for predicting a first semester freshman year (i.e. Fall you take Calc A and Spring Calc B, Fall you take comp sci I and Spring comp sci 2). I will see if I can find room capacity. I may just call the College of Engineering (comp sci dept) and hope they are honest with me.
Oh wow! It’s University of Delaware, a large school definitely but not insanely huge. The UD President gave his presentation about he was so happy to announce the 95% full in person, but now that I am thinking about the 100 class size limit, I’m worrying my son’s entire freshman first semester will be virtual, which would be awful.
At University of Delaware Courses Search , you can select 2020 Fall (last fall) to get an idea of what typical fall semester class sizes are like.
For example, in fall 2020, MATH221 (Calculus I) comes up with the following:
https://udapps.nss.udel.edu/CoursesSearch/search-results?term=2208&search_type=A&course_sec=MATH221&session=All&course_title=&instr_name=&text_info=All&campus=&instrtn_mode=All&time_start_hh=&time_start_ampm=&credit=Any&keyword=&geneduc=&subj_area_code=&college=
This lists 9 lectures with capacity 104 students. There are also associated discussions of 26 students each.
For CISC108 (Introduction to Computer Science I), the class schedule shows that in fall 2020, there were three 60 student lectures and one 35 student lecture, as well as labs of 30 students associated with the 60 student lectures and a 35 student lab associated with the 35 student lecture.
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Thank you so much! I did not go back that far and figured the numbers might be off in Fall b/c it was all virtual, but then again Spring right now is mostly virtual. Hopefully if they are close at 104, they might do what they can to keep it under 100. If he has a class or two out of five at virtual I think he’d be ok with that. Just not all virtual. Thanks again!
My son will be going to UCSC and is prepared to have most of his first year lectures be online but is waiting to see about how they will handle labs and discussions. He will be living on campus (Fall California COVID-19 status willing), so at least he will be there rather than sitting in our basement pretending to be on college.
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Here is UCSC’s class schedule: UC Santa Cruz - Schedule of Classes
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Thank you- Just yesterday they sent an updated bulletin on their plans for Fall that seems fluid to keep in mind potential increases and decreases in infection rates. So long as he is on campus, he will be able to deal with online classes with the understanding that he needs to go to office hours and meet with Tas so they get to know him.
There’s not a lot of difference between online classes and massive lectures. It’s not as if there’s a ton of seminar-style discussion in either case.
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That’s probably true. I just wanted him to have the full college experience with mostly in person classes his first semester. However, that’s based on my picture of the college experience going back so many years ago (dinosaur age) recalling the big lecture halls at UD. Times have changed in many ways and that mode of instruction may no longer be the expected mode of learning even after COVID. Courses with a lab component like comp sci would be smaller and he’d have that lab part live.