White fluorescent lights cast upon an 800-square-feet room. It is lined with long desks and chairs that are either missing a handle or have part of their cushions peeled. An uncooperative projector looms over the desks. A mysterious buzz lingers in the room. What is this, you ask? Lo and behold, a classroom.
Ah, the classroom. Since the 1900s, this has been the norm in education: grouping similar-age students in rooms — often stuffy and artificially lit — to do standardized tasks and assessments. This is where we spend most of our youth. We university students may not yet be experts at our field of study, but we are quite the classroom experts.
What makes a good classroom, and what unconventional spaces could serve as classrooms? Let us see what students at UBC Okanagan have to say.
A good classroom is made up of several factors. First, students find that their productivity in class is influenced by how the desks and chairs are arranged. Here is The Phoenix Features writer, Soha Aftab’s take:
“I really like flexible spaces like… ART 365 that has rolling chairs so [we] can move around and rearrange ourselves … I think those are really great for humanities classes.”
Indeed, a lot of discussions take place in humanities, and it is easier to talk to one another when there is no furniture in the way. With the rolling chairs in ART 365, a classroom in the Arts Building at UBCO, you do not have to stand up and rearrange chairs, twist your body to face the person behind you, or lean forward to hear your classmate straining their voice from across the room. This classroom has no large desks. Instead, small desks are attached to the rolling chairs, omitting spatial barriers. This setup allows students to interact flexibly, such that discussions can flow smoothly.
On the other hand, Aftab says that small desks are a disadvantage for writing exams. While having both table and chair in one facilitates in-class discussions, it is less comfortable to write on small desks like those in ART 365. Already nervous to take an exam, you do not want pencils falling onto the ground or your elbow dangling off the table. In this context, large and stationary desks would serve you better, whereas insufficient writing space could harm your performance in a course.
A similar case is the theatre on campus, in the Administrative Building. Some classes such as art history, visual arts, and creative writing are taught here. Typically, students sit in the audience and the professor lectures on-stage. The seats in the audience also have desks attached to them. They are about the size of an iPad. The Phoenix web publisher, Arjay Andal, expresses his opinions about this classroom layout:
“It's the least productive [in my university experience] so far. The desks are sometimes useless and [I] have to write notes on my lap.”
Andal was referring to a classroom in the Arts Building, ART 103, which has the same layout as the campus theatre. He added that since most students take notes on their electronic devices, it is inconvenient that there are no charger outlets nearby.
Besides spatial arrangement and writing space, lighting also affects students’ ability to absorb information. To look at this, we can return to the campus theatre. Plush seats and dim lighting — the cinematic mood is great for watching live shows, but when it comes to lectures, it gets hard to focus. Pair that with a soft-spoken professor and you have yourself the optimal atmosphere for an in-class nap!
However, there are not just downsides to the theatre. In fact, 72% of students voted “Yes” when asked on our Instagram if they liked having class in the theatre. When taking performance-related classes, The Phoenix operations manager, Noah Davis, prefers the theatre over the performance studio in the Creative and Critical Studies Building (CCS 144):
“I prefer the theatre because I like that there's seating in it already, plus a stage area where you can rehearse and move … It's a good balance, whereas CCS 144 has this really hard floor that is uncomfortable, and the only seating is … those blue chairs.”
The blue chairs Davis mentioned are small and made of stingy plastic — rather painful to sit on for the duration of a lecture — yet even performance-related classes could involve lectures and writing. In that case, the theatre is a room where all of that can happen.
Considering this, a good classroom depends on its compatibility with the activities done in class. As mentioned before, discussion-based classes work well with moveable furniture, whereas classes that involve both lecturing and movement function best in the theatre. Additionally, the theatre’s three projectors and screens are a plus for art history classes, where students need to see the detail of artwork up close.
At the end of the day, a ‘good’ learning space looks different for each person and each course. When it comes to more practical disciplines like fine arts and nursing, UBCO provides spaces other than the traditional classroom. It just so happens that the Creative and Critical Studies (CCS) Building is where all of this happens.
According to Daniel Kwan, a third-year nursing student, though theory-based lectures still happen in traditional classrooms, an important part of the nursing program takes place in the Clinical Simulation Lab (CSL), which is in the CCS Building. The CSL provides a realistic setting and the necessary equipment for practicing nursing skills and procedures. This space is designated for nursing students, which Kwan appreciates:
“It is nice to have our own separate floor for simulations and skill practices, as there will not be any other people wandering around or disturbing [you], and it is … cool to have a place that is always reserved only for you.”
Likewise, fine arts students enjoy a unique privilege in the CCS Building; they have 24-hour access to the building and its studio spaces. This is great because timing is crucial to creativity. You do not want to have an idea brewing in the middle of the night but find the doors to your sculpture-in-progress locked. At UBCO, every fine arts student gets their own key card to the CCS Building, which allows them to enter and work on their projects any time of the day.
Dorothy Cui, a third-year visual arts major believes this 24-hour access is pertinent to her degree:
“What is very important for me as a fine arts student is having access to the studio all the time. This is because my ‘studying’ is [mostly] me working on my projects.”
Learning is facilitated by space and access to space. This occurs in relation to discussion, writing, focusing, practicing skills, and being creative. A good classroom satisfies most of these needs. However, with the amount of courses and students in university, it is hard to design spaces that accommodate so many needs.
Perhaps there is no perfect classroom, but even though the classroom has been a longstanding norm in education, you do not necessarily need to be in one to learn. Sometimes, the most valuable learning experiences happen outside the classroom.
One might argue that the best learning space is actually real life. Luckily, there are professors who recognise the importance of real-life experience and incorporate this in their course design.
For example, The Phoenix graphics designer, Francisco Elizarraras, encountered an astronomy professor who organized stargazing activities for his students. While most of the astronomy course took place in a classroom, the professor would also inform students if there was a good time to see stars, organize a meet-up, and look through telescopes with them. In doing so, the professor connected theory to real life — one can only learn so much about stars in a classroom.
These extracurricular activities make the learning process more engaging. To get a good grasp on your discipline, you have to do more than just read and write. Knowing how to apply the concepts you learned in class, and how they are relevant to society, is also a key part of learning. That said, university curricula tend to leave this part out, which is why students end up feeling stuck in a cycle of assignments and midterms.
The Phoenix Opinions writer, Avery Cummins, feels deeply about the significance of learning outside the classroom. In one of her political science classes, her professor made sure to link classroom content to the real world. He included an optional activity in his course, nicknamed “Soviet Saturday,” in which he would bring students to a shooting range to try their hand at WWII era rifles. Cummins was apprehensive at first, but she took the leap and joined “Soviet Saturday:”
“This experience was so cool because of the fact that it made the politics and the reality of conflict a lot more physical and “real” in a way that’s hard to get with other elements of political science.”
Cummins goes on to point out that this type of learning is hard to come by in university:
“I wish more classes had experiences like this, but it’s tricky with my degree ... because [political science] is really theoretical and non-tangible, so there isn’t a lot about it that you can experience in a hands-on way. For example, you can’t necessarily try out an anarchical society for a day or get to make laws or policy decisions in an [undergraduate] situation.”
True, university was not built to replicate real life. If we want to come across experiences like what Elizarraras and Cummins described, perhaps the best way is to seek them out ourselves. Your professors may not bring you out to stargaze or shoot WWII era rifles, but you can still actively reach out to them and ask about events taking place in town that might benefit your learning.
As undergraduate students, we do not have much of a say on where and how our courses take place, yet other than being classroom experts with limited agency, we can also be experts on adaptability: if you have class in the theatre and know that those yellow lights will lull you to sleep, bring a coffee to class; if it is ART 365 and you know your elbows will hurt from writing on those tiny desks, maybe invest in a clipboard and rest your elbow on the desk instead.
No matter where your learning takes place, now that we have settled into the second term and the add/drop period has passed, it is mine and The Phoenix’s sincerest hopes that your classrooms are kind to you!
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