In September 2020, Dublin City University (DCU) Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (FHSS) and the DCU Business School (BS) launched a project “Promoting Student Engagement in Large Class Environments”, examining relevant tools and strategies used to engage students in large classroom settings. The findings reported in this paper are drawn from focus groups and an online survey designed to elicit student perceptions, experiences and engagement of large class teaching and learning and are predominantly by first year students who participated in this phase of the research. Those first year students represented 76% of all focus group respondents and 72% of those who participated in the online survey and thus represent an important perspective to be considered in our teaching and learning approaches.