Encouraging students in large classes

Our experiences and results of encouraging our students in a large CSI course to keep up with the pace of the course at a reasonable cost for us are presented. We have successfully managed to pinpoint students who are about to fall into the anonymity and passivity trap and give them the extra attention they need to avoid the trap when they need it. Since we managed to pinpoint the most needing students we can give them the extra personal recognition and encouragement they need at a very reasonable cost in the perspective of the whole course. For the two years we have tried our concept we can see a significant increase in the pass rate of the final exam.