Sizes of Lectures. In this paper we will focus on large and small classes because large classes will be mostly used in graduate education (study 1) and small classes will be used in high-school (study 2). These two groups will be the focus point in our research. The definition of a large class size according to Xxxxx and Xxxxxxxxx (1996, p. 773) is a number of students between 60 and 149 students or even more. They divided the class sizes into five categories: “very small - between 3 and 9; small - between 10 and 29; medium - between 30 and 59; large - between 60 and 149; and very large - classes of more than students.” Xxxxx and Xxxxxxxxx (1996) their definition is consistent with the one that Din (1998) uses. He considered a class of 50 or more students as large and a small class was one with less than 30 students. Note that large classes are frequently referred to as ‘large lecture’ or ‘large lecture sections’ because the instructors usually choose to teach by the lecture method. (Xxxxxx & Xxxxxxxx, 2000) Previous research suggests that 73 to 83 percent of the instructors taught their classes using the lecture method. (Xxxxxxxx, 1994) This is also one of the arguments against large lectures put forward by Xxxxx (2007), which will be further discussed in the next paragraph. Even though large lecture classes have their disadvantages, they can still be used if the classes are structured with clear (behavior) objectives and with a focus on specific problems which students have to face with writing for example business letters. (Xxxxx and Xxxxxxxx, 1988) This makes sense because they found that it is not the size of the class but the used instruction method that is the most important ingredient of learning. In their analysis it was clear that one large business communication class, which involved less lecturing (called ‘environmental’ mode), had more participation than the smaller classes. Their results were consistent with Hillocks (1984) meta- analysis. They also found that active learning is effective considering students who participated in the more structured class scored higher on the post-test. A disadvantage of a more structured class with a focus on specific problems is that it increases the workload for the instructors of those large classes. However, it is worth the effort, given the results. Xxxxx (2007) identified eight possible harmful effects that are associated with large-sized classes:
