Can the arrangement of a classroom have an effect on the classroom experience?

Comfort is not always a quantifiable phenomenon. But we know that when people are uncomfortable, they are distracted. Temperature, lighting, and furnishings all play a role in a person being comfortable.

Comfort, both physically and psychologically, helps to promote interaction and critical thinking in the classroom. Of all the different ideas and plans to promote critical thinking, student engagement, and interactive classrooms, no plan covers all of these areas as well as creating a classroom that is physically comfortable for both the students and professors. Several aspects come into play when planning to create an ideal classroom. The learning space needs to be flexible, comfortable, and user friendly for all parties involved. 

Responses from Estrella Mountain Community College regarding traditional classrooms as opposed to learning studios (classrooms that provide more flexibility and comfort. 

Flexibility is vastly important when creating a classroom environment that is beneficial to both the professor and the student. Having a classroom designed so it can be quickly altered presents professors with more options to engage their students. Today’s students expect to be engaged and active in their learning. Passive listening is a learning style of the past. Students today are used to discovering answers on their own and retain information much better that way. By using a flexible style of seating in the classroom it will allow students to move seamlessly from group work, student instruction, or to an arrangement that promotes class-wide discussion. It will also allow students to have their laptops at hand if they can be near a power source and have whiteboards to use as their own in the classroom. All of these things will promote student engagement, which is the key to students performing well and retaining information. And since millennials have also been described as team-oriented people, the ability to work comfortably in groups will help facilitate their learning in a big way. 

Student comfort is a vastly overlooked aspect of the classroom. Students in today’s world thrive on having some sort of control over their classroom experience. Giving students different seating options or control over a personal light source will make them feel more in-control over their time in the classroom. College-aged individuals today are used to personalizing everything. So, giving students the opportunity to personalize the area in which they learn seems like a common-sense approach to the classroom design. All the research being done about this sort of thing seems to point out one key point: today’s students need options and control. If a student, or professor for that matter, is presented with options to carry out in in the classroom, he/she will feel like they have some sort of control over the environment. This will help them learn in a way that they would normally want to learn in. The more option that become available in the classroom, the more control a student can have over his/her learning experience. 

The combination of comfortable and flexible classroom design helps to achieve a learning environment that is user friendly. If the physical components of a classroom can become more flexible, it will open more windows of opportunity to engage students in a  meaningful manner. Likewise, if comfort is achieved alongside the flexibility, students will not feel as if they are trapped in a confined place for an hour. This would mean less time would be spent thinking about what the student is going to eat after class, and more time would be spent learning the material being presented in class. Overall, the three most important components of a classroom being presented in research are comfort, flexibility, and user-friendliness. If this can be accomplished, students will have clearer minds and will be able to think critically and effectively about the material being covered in class. 

*As a bonus, I think one aspect that deserves some attention would be the possibility of sit-to-stand desks. Having desks that allow students to sit or stand provides more flexibility and comfort, and there are definite health benefits that follow along with this option. Here is an article that talks about some of those benefits. Also, one more.