Experience tells me it is no larger than 20 to 1. Any larger and it gets difficult to respond to chats in a timely manner and grade work on time.
The classes that have seemed to be the best as far as student participation have been between 12 and 24 students. If you start dropping below 12 students and there are students who don't do much in the discussion board or who only do the minimum, then there are not enough posts for other students to reply to and the dialog is limited to a few participants talking back and forth to each other. If the class has around 30 students, it starts to become difficult to address each student in the level of detail that I would like to within the required timeframe.
Hi Herbert,
I would say that from my experience around 20:1 is an optimal ratio. It is important to have enough students to generate discussion. At the same time, I want to be able to spend the needed time offering additional help and interaction in the classroom to all of the students. Less than this and many courses will not survive! That is bad for the student and the instructor.
Best
Dr Hall-Pogar
I personally prefer classes with 6-10 students and one instructor. I feel the discussion can still be robust, but not unwieldy and hard to facilitate. Too small a class and the discussion falls flat.
Christopher,
This range also helps to ensure a fairly good group dynamic in discussions. If you only have 4 students, you don't get much variety; however, with 15-20 the student to student interaction is better and it is still manageable for the instructor.
Herbert Brown III
15-20 sounds very reasonable. While more one-on-one time is desirable to fully gauge what the student has learned this number of students will hopefully give you a good balance to focus not only on one student but the class as a whole.
Russell,
I think you will find that your ratio based on your experience is very similar to most other individual's experiences.
Herbert Brown III
Russell,
I think you will find that your ratio based on your experience is very similar to most other individual's experiences.
Herbert Brown III
sydney,
I agree that is can be a personal preference; however, administrators establish optimal ratios all the time for programs they manage. If you were the administrator and had to set an optimal range, what would you set? I do understand that the type of content and level of the content can influence this as well.
Herbert Brown III
Bari,
Wow, 1 student. You can't have a lot of student to student interaction with one :-) 60 on the other hand would make it very challenging to interact in a personal way with each of the 60 students as well.
Herbert Brown III
I think if it is an introductory course there should be no more than fifteen students per course. As I think we need more hands on learning to accomplish this.
Secondly, 25 to me should be the most that should be in a course. As I have found personally that more than that number it is often hard to give the students personal attention they often need.
The introductory students take quite a bit more preparation early on to get them assimilated to the program at hand.
An optimal online student-instructor ratio is personal. It would be the number of students that an instructor can personally handle. By handle, I mean that the instructor is able to give each student an equal amount of attention and help and is able to affectively cater to their questions and needs.
I have had as low as 1 student in a class and as many as 60 in a class. Depending on the type of class it is and the workload assigned to the students I think 15-20 is the best ratio.
Joseph,
Very well put. The ratio of 15-20 students is the experience of most people that respond to this post. This has been my personal experience as well.
Herbert Brown III
I have seen studies in the past that specify that an appropriate online ratio of students to instructor is 15. I have been teaching online for over ten years now and have personally experiences different ratios, from over 40 to fewer than 6. I believe the ideal ratio continues to be 15. Above that number it becomes difficult to reply to all participants in a discussion topic, respond to all written assignments with comprehensive formative input and keep up with those "at risk" students who may miss logging on, miss assignments, score low on quizzes or need special assistance. In addition, it is not unusual for an instructor to have 3 or 4 classes at one time and many courses are organized into a weekly schedule. In other words, assignments and discussions are scheduled for each week and when we have, say, 30 or 35 students in each class, this can be quite a heavy burden for instructors.
Bob,
Is this the same for all course content and all levels? I have found that many variables influence the ideal ratio for a course.
Herbert Brown III
Carolyn,
So as I read your statement the ratio is dependent on the type of content in the course. I would agree as the writing intensive courses I teach take much more time as well. The level of the content can also influence the ratio. For example, graduate coursework may require smaller ratios due to the research and discussion elements usually present in these courses.
Herbert Brown III
We have tried many different class sizes and the one that seems to work the best is around 30 students. This allows for great discussions and a better learning environment for the students.
Depending on the content, 15 - 20 would be a good number. When teaching Office 2013, the higher end would work. Grading of documents of this kind I find relativly easy. Programming, on the other hand, is far more difficult. A lower enrollment is better due to the amount of one-on-one communication needed. Trouble shooting the vast number of errors in programs is more time consuming than that of Office applications,
Kelly,
This ratio is pretty consistent with others postings. I agree that the more students in the average course, the less likely they are to get quality and timely feedback.
Herbert Brown III
