With the growing interest in active learning at the college and university level, institutions are engaging in efforts to update classrooms to accommodate new pedagogies. These initiatives face different challenges at different institutions, but there are some common themes emerging from the process of transforming traditional classrooms. A piece in Campus Technology covers the activities at four institutions: SUNY Geneseo, UC Irvine, UNC Chapel Hill, and Georgia State.
In each case those working to develop new classrooms confronted established interests, including registrars reluctant to give up seating capacity to the more spacious demands of active learning, facilities departments concerned about furniture requirements, IT groups worried about standardizing technology provisions, and faculty members who needed to share the pedagogical possibilities they wanted to entertain. The pressures from these groups become more serious as efforts to remodel classrooms scale up.
The cases reviewed highlight the fact that modifying the environments in formal educational institutions typically involves compromises which are often addressed by suggesting that the initiatives are designed to enhance flexibility. But if the very similar looking photos from different institutions in the article are any indication, the new flexibility may become the new orthodoxy.
Be the first to comment