But I can only do...

These days, and for the foreseeable future, you will not find resources for teaching easy to come by, no matter where you teach. Most institutions, throughout the world, are suffering real and significant cuts in their income, and neither you nor the students can be sheltered from this. Nor is it practical, in the short term, to attack governments, university leadership or anyone else for the situation. (Cox, 1994, p21)

So what is practical? In the chapter “Why classes should be small, but how to help your students be active learners even in large classes,” McKeachie (1994, Chap. 20) provides a number of tips on how to provide high quality teaching in a climate of shrinking resources and increasing class sizes. Similarly there are other ideas, be they from published materials or from colleagues you might bump into, that could help to increase the quality of teaching. No doubt it takes time, trouble and a degree of creativity to make the best use of whatever is available so that students receive maximum benefit from a class. Some university teachers are willing to invest an enormous amount of their time and energy to enable effective student learning. Fortunately at UWA high quality teaching is recognised and rewarded through awards and perhaps more importantly, in promotion.

Sometimes it needs no more than a little lateral thinking or collaboration between colleagues and departments to overcome a problem in a classroom setting.

Cox (1994) argues:

We must not undermine the collegial structure which is so essential in all education, and so we must not fall into the trap of fighting each other for the meagre resources available. We must make the case for our teaching resources with reasonableness, and with the same detached objectivity that we (are supposed to) bring to our research or other scholarly activities. And we must give the cases made by others the same objective consideration. However, while adopting a spirit of compromise, there are limits below which allocated resources are inadequate to support the quality of education the students are entitled to expect. (p21)

What happens when the ‘limits’ are reached?

• Cox, B. (1994). Practical pointers for university teachers. London: Kogan Page.

  McKeachie, W.J. (1994). Teaching tips (9th ed.). Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath & Co.