Leanne Riseley's List: Classroom Design

• We all had tales of disconnects among executive visioning, facilities planning, and pedagogy. We agreed that this has led to the continued use of inferior teaching methods. In some cases, faculty, departments, and colleges are changing pedagogy and vacating existing facilities in favor of group-friendly spaces, informal settings, and virtual environments. One person described large lecture halls at her institution as now empty except for the occasional campus event. Both of these outcomes are undesirable and reflect the urgent need for a more enlightened approach to facilities planning.
• Clearly, online and virtual spaces must be considered in this discussion right alongside brick-and-mortar spaces.
• creating experimental spaces for faculty where good tools and practices could be developed, refined, and rolled out to campus.
• How can we know what to adopt if we don’t try it first? How can we expect faculty to change their approach if we don’t provide them with safe ways to explore? The best ideas for using learning spaces are not going to come from us; they will continue to come from students and faculty.

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• Attitudes and perceptions of both students and instructors were uniformly positive and teaching in the room changed student-faculty and student-student relationships
• Challenges included training instructors to use the capabilities of the room “on the fly” and human factors issues (e.g., pillars obstructing lines of sight). None of the challenges were major obstacles and neither students nor instructors wanted to return to a traditional classroom at the end of the term.
• Students indicated that they felt more appreciated and engaged when meeting in the active learning classrooms.
• how demoralizing it can be to walk into a large lecture hall where it is immediately apparent that the top priority in designing the space was not teaching or learning, but money.
• Room planning and assignment are complex processes, but aligning them more closely with pedagogical needs and goals is certainly not an impossible task. What seems to be missing is an appreciation on the part of facilities planners and campus administrators of the value this might add in terms of not only improved learning outcomes, but stronger place attachment.

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• Reasons for Active Learning Classrooms:

   
   
  • Offers instructors another choice for teaching
   
  • Enables instructors to better interact with students
   
  • Furniture and technology set-up allow students to work in small groups of 3 students, which takes advantage of cooperative learning techniques and helps students form learning groups
   
  • Creates a cooperative learning environment that encourages students to collaborate with peers by questioning and teaching one another
   
  • Allows instructors to coach students during activities by assisting them in answering their own questions
   
  • Allows students to present their results to the class for review by peers and instructors

• Reasons for Flexible Classrooms:

   
   
  • Flexible room design allows classrooms to keep pace with changing course requirements and pedagogy
   
   
   
   
   
   
  • flexibility in room size and capacity
   
  • flexibility in classroom technology
   
  • flexibility in furniture
   
   
   
   
   
   
  • Classrooms can be “flexed” on a semester-by-semester basis
   
  • Major classroom renovation costs can be avoided over the life cycle of the building

• If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
•   If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
• If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
•   If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
• If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
• If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
•   If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
• If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
• If the cost of creating high-tech lecture halls and classrooms is huge, what is the cost to maintain them and keep them up to date as technology changes? How does one estimate that cost?
• How important is it to have an exact plan for that, and does the IT plan have more of an impact on the design and technology that goes into it?
• Maintence costs are also significant. One way to estimate these types of costs is to develop a plan that at least covers the routine or planned maintence. For example, at Dartmouth, we have a plan that estimates costs: assuming that projectors need replacement every four years, that classroom computers need replacement every two years, and that the other componentry will need replacement every eight years. With such a plan in hand, we know, or at least have a fair idea, of what our plan maintence costs will be five and six years out. On top of that, you need to plan for unplanned maintence, equipment that fails, backups so you can swap equipment in and out, and things like that. On top of that, might be the physical aspects of the classroom, such as carpeting, chairs, window darkenings, etc. Bottom line is that these maintence costs are significant and they need to be taken into consideration in your planning. One suggestion easier to say than to do: don't defer maintence with respect to your classrooms.
  
• What is the estimated life of a data projector?
• At Dartmouth, we assume that a projector will have a useful life of four years.

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