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Re: New classroom



Dwight Souder was asking about new classroom designs....

We've been working on trying different learning environments for a long
time. For example, we've seen that round (or pentagon, for that matter)
tables are much better at promoting collaboration. Seven foot diameter round
tables will comfortably seat 3 teams of 3 students. You can fit 9 people at
a 6 foot table, but it is tight. 1 computer per 3 students works better than
other ratios we've tried. (In fact it is even better than 2 computers per 3
students, since no one is left out.) Laptops are much better than monitors
because they can be closed and moved out of the way...monitors tend to block
table-wide discussions.

We've put a lot of this stuff on our website <http://ncsu.edu/per>. Go to
the SCALE-UP link and look around. If you want info on table vendors, etc.,
let me know. We might be able to scare up some travel funds if you want to
see a classroom like this in use.

Bob Beichner
NC State Physics Education Research & Development Group