Teaching HCI to Hundreds of Undergraduate Software Engineering and Computer Science Students

As HCI has become more mainstream, introductory HCI courses have transitioned in many universities from more specialised elective courses taught in postgraduate degree programmes to compulsory courses taught in the first or second year of undergraduate degree programmes. At many universities, this transition means that class sizes can jump from one or two dozen students to many hundreds of students. This paper collects some of my experiences and advice for teaching HCI to such large class sizes, including redesigning the course to an online environment during the COVID pandemic.