Does Class Size Matter? An Exploration into Faculty Perceptions of Teaching High-Enrollment Online Courses

Class size has been a popular topic for decades. There is renewed interest in this topic now with the growth of online learning. Online courses can accommodate hundreds, if not thousands, of students in a single course. Very little research, though, has been conducted recently on class size in online courses and the research that has been conducted is mixed. As the demand for online courses increases, so likely will class size. In this exploratory study, we investigated the perceptions and experiences of 37 faculty teaching high-enrollment online courses. In the following article, we report the results of our inquiry, implications for practice, and areas for additional research.