A better way of arranging the class

In my earlier post, I discussed how classroom layout impacts the learning process.

Just recently, I've seen another classroom layout, which I find better than the typical students-facing-the-board layout.

I say its better because if properly used, this layout enhances the amount of productive interaction (emphasis on "productive") taking place in the classroom.

As some of us are probably aware of, there are two types of major interactions happening in the class: the interaction among students (student-student interaction) and the interaction between the teacher and the student (teacher-student interaction). These are what we want to maximize to promote meaningful learning.

Let's take a look at a typical arrangement of a class with 8 students:

The two-headed arrows represent the interaction taking place among students.

In this arrangement. we can see there are four probabilities of student-student communication taking place.

Often, a classroom using this is a teacher-centered classroom wherein the teacher's talking/working time is significantly greater than the student's talking/working time.

This arrangement is amazing for lectures!
However, if the teacher wants to engage students in activities, it will be difficult in this format.

Likewise, since this layout often caters to a teacher-centered discussion, the chances are, if the teacher loses hold of the class attention, it totally disrupts the entire learning process.

Students begin to finding something interesting-say, for example, talking with each other or moving around.

Now let's take a look at a modified classroom layout of a class with 8 students:

In this layout, we can see that the teacher grouped the class into four's in an L-shape arrangement, where the students at the side are facing inwards the classroom.

As you can see, in just one cluster (with fours students), we can expect six (6!) probable productive interactions. So, multiply this number by the number of groups we have (in this figure, two), we are expecting 12 strands of interaction taking place at a time.

Amazing isn't it? IF we are talking about collaborative, student-centered and interactive/experiential learning.

A little modification though is necessary to make this equally effective in lectures. By asking the students at the side to face the front, we can easily deviate their attention from the group to the teacher.

Here's an actual class with the modified arrangement:

Bottom line


The modified classroom layout is an amazing way of arranging the class.
It provides us the opportunities to make use of lots and lots of teaching techniques.
It allows us to practice effective pedagogy and sound teaching principles and praxis aside from lectures.
However, if we do not innovate in a classroom with this modified setting, we may expect multitude of unproductive interactions that may eventually jeopardize the learning process.