In a classroom context, where one measure of quality is the number of interactions between instructor and students, assuming for the time being that all interactions are of equal quality, whether in a physical classroom or an electronic classroom, the more students there are the greater the limitations on interactions and the less the presumed quality. One of the recurring themes in feedback from instructors who teach courses on the Internet is that the requirement for interacting with all the students is much greater than in the physical classroom. At the University of Colorado at Denver our response has been to limit enrollments to no more than 25 students per section of a course. In another recurring theme instructors report that many of their interactions deal with responding to the same questions over and over again.
Most questions deal with course logistics or with course content.
Enrollment limits of 25 per section for a large number of sections do not meet the revenue needs of major educational institutions. For this project we are utilizing courses offered through CU Online, a virtual campus of the University of Colorado providing courses and offering student services entirely over the Internet. In less than two years the program has grown from one course with four students to averaging 45-50 courses in a semester with over 1,000 enrollments. Initially the program capped courses at 25 students in order to create and maintain small student to instructor ratios so that students could have greater interaction with the instructor and other cohorts. This project will implement larger enrollment course sections with the intentions of maintaining the quality of the course, increasing the efficiency of teaching, and controlling or reducing the cost growth of delivering online education.