Active Learning Spaces

When we think about some of the main concepts that are embodied in the recent teaching and learning paradigm shift, we think about student engagement, active learning, collaboration, and peer instruction. And when we reflect upon the impediments to making these things happen in courses, instructors often indict the physical spaces in which they teach. The configuration of classrooms, the technology within them, and the behaviors they encourage are frequently represented as a barrier to enacting student centered teaching methods, because traditionally designed rooms typically lack flexibility in seating arrangement, are configured to privilege a speaker at the front of the room, and lack technology to facilitate student collaboration. But many colleges and universities are redesigning the spaces in which students learn, collapsing traditional lecture halls and labs to create new, hybrid spaces-large technology-enriched studios-with the flexibility to support active and collaborative learning in larger class sizes. With this change, our classrooms are coming to embody the 21st-century pedagogy which many educators accept, and research and teaching practice are beginning to help us to understand the educational implications of thoughtfully engineered classrooms-in particular, that space and how we use it affects what, how, and how much students learn.