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Description
This qualitative case study investigated how community college students perceived specific classroom attributes as contributing to or hindering their learning. The study addressed three questions: What has been the role of students in classroom design within the community college campus? How do students assess the classroom's physical design impact on their learning? And, what can students tell us about their needs for future classroom design? Students were able to clearly identify classroom attributes that enhanced their learning as well as those aspects of the built environment that inhibited their learning. Students completed "wish drawings" that depicted what they believed the ideal built environment would be for them. The article closes discussing how past, present, and future students can be used by community college facilities planners to better design the built environments to make them more conducive to optimal student learning.
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Excited and more than just a little anxious Johanna Barnes, a new faculty member at County Community College, strides toward her classroom. She realizes that she is twenty minutes early, but she needs that time to organize her materials, review the room's layout, and make the inevitable adjustments to the seating arrangements. She also wants to be sure the computer and projector units she ordered have been delivered and set up. She knows she would feel better if she could see her first slide appear on the screen before her students arrive. She throws open the door to her classroom, and she suddenly is transported into a tropical climate; the room is sweltering, humid, and stuffy. Quickly scanning for a room thermostat or better yet air conditioning controls she is dismayed but not surprised to find neither. Thankfully the room does have windows. Quickly moving to them, she pulls back the blinds, opens the window's lock, and pushes on the window's frame. It won't budge. Trying again with more force fueled by a rush of adrenalin, she slams the palm of her hand against the window's frame. The window remains fixed, and she discovers that its wooden frames are swollen shut. Desperately she moves to another window, opens the lock, and pushes up. Success! The window opens. Rushing from window to window she manages to free five of the eight windows allowing the Indian summer's dry heat to breeze gently into the classroom. With air circulating she turns toward the computer cart only to realize that what has been delivered is generations removed from the state-of-the-art computer and display projector she had trained on during faculty development day. As she mentally tries to make the knowledge transfer between computer generations, she becomes aware of the thud, thud, thud sound the blinds were now making in front of the open windows. She quickly reviews her options: raise the blinds to allow the breeze to cool the room and silence their noise but lose visual effectiveness from her new PowerPoint presentation. Close the windows, close the blinds and increase the visual graphics' effectiveness but swelter in the classroom sauna. She has no time to think these choices through clearly with only five minutes until class time. She turns back to the student tables and chairs and realizes that several early arriving students have observed her trial-by-fire. Weakly she returns their knowing smiles and asks if they will help her rearrange the tables and chairs into a conference square arrangement. "Can't help you there," the young 20ish male smiles at her, "All the tables are bolted to the floor!" She smiles and nods thanking him just the same. Quickly she scans the students who have arrived and filled over half the seats. Most are fanning themselves with papers and notebooks; several are wiping the perspiration from their brows; and others appear to be somewhere between disgruntled and just plain angry. Johanna fights back a wave of panic as fear gnaws at her self-confidence. She has not had a chance to turn on the equipment and open her PowerPoint presentation. She has no idea whom to call to get some help with the climate control. She does know this is not a good start to her first class day at County Community College!
Background
Various studies have examined the relationships among student performance, achievement, behavior, and the built environment (Earthman & Lemaster, 1996). These studies all hinted at linkages between the classroom's physical qualities and student learning and persistence. To date there have been no specific findings corroborating these identified linkages (Tinto, 1997). Still, postsecondary researchers believe that the classroom plays a key role in postsecondary student development and learning (Merkel, 1999; Tinto, 1997). Banning (1992) and Scott-Webber, Marini, and Abraham (2000) found the relationship between classroom and learning environment significant because the built environment can influence behaviors.... |
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