Why Don't Classrooms Look Like This?
Justin Bathon on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 2:45PM ;)
This is a picture of our Lab Space (The Keep) in Dickey Hall at the University of Kentucky (notice the play-doh). We have students workspace in this room and a conference table and whatnot. We developed this room from a former computer lab for about a couple thousand (mostly of our own money).
So, I am sitting here (that's my laptop) trying to find the right room for my class of about 20 principal students to meet in this Fall. I don't want a classroom with those 1954 squeeze-your-butt-in-desks and I'm not a huge fan of the industrial square table room either. So, it struck me ... why don't our classrooms look like where I am sitting right now? I want a classroom full of couches! Maybe even a flatscreen on the wall. And plants. Why don't we have plants in our higher education classrooms? And, yeah, play-doh.
I'm serious. Why don't our higher education classrooms look like this?
Reader Comments (3)
There was some great research on the power of space in the learning process done at North Carolina State and IUPUI in Indianapolis. The message about the type of experience students and teachers will have in class is sent by the configuration of the space. Your picture says that professor and student are equal in importance in the learning process and that dialog among and between participants is the primary mode of the classroom. In those "typical" rooms the message is very clear that the important person will be present at the well-defined front of the classroom and student participation will be with the teacher only.
Schools, both k-12 and higher ed, are in a default position of teacher centered practice. Look at the facilities design course in your program or in any program and I bet you see a lack of discussion about how space shapes learning opportunities. Instead it will be focused on the nuts and bolts of how funds are raised and spent to build standard 900 sp ft classrooms with teacher desks and student desks and a clear "front" of the room.
Until we start pressing toward a different instructional norm we will not get different instructional spaces.
Additionally, why don't our PK-12 systems look like this? The general shift from "knowledge" to "application" should indicate an overall adjustment in layout and design as well. If we aren't learning facts (which at one point I would argue was the definition of "smart" in our society) and we are focused on skills and decisions, then why would we not accomodate that in our learning environments? It would look different in a 2nd grade classroom than a 10th grade than a university physics lab, but each could be designed with the outcome in mind.
Good thoughts Marshall and Chris.
I agree Chris that until they are pressed they won't change ... so, let's press them. That's my response to you Marshall. I took a old computer lab that was not being used and re-purposed it into a custom fit solution to our learning needs. Now that I have that example to show, I feel a lot more comfortable pressing directly on classrooms in our College of Education.
If there is ever going to be any kind of pressing to make this kind of stuff happen, I think it will need to come from us. Outsiders just don't care that much.