This developmental study explores the process and outcomes of creating an active learning classroom within a higher education setting. To support student success, institutions have increasingly redesigned their learning spaces to promote active learning. Early initiatives often aimed to facilitate collaborative learning and reduce reliance on…

A growing diversity of classroom designs, broadly labeled as active learning classrooms, is a rising development across higher education institutions. Along with the construction of these new spaces, stakeholders have developed new vocabularies and concepts for articulating and identifying the impact of new classroom designs for teaching and…

Faculty and student perception of engagement in two (mobile desks or mobile tables and chairs) low-tech active learning classroom (ALC) designs were compared. Student (n = 413) perceptions of engagement were measured with the Engaged Learning Index (ELI) and the Social Context and Learning Environments (SCALE) instruments at the beginning and end…

Purpose: Systematic efforts to study students' use of informal learning spaces are crucial for determining how, when and why students use such spaces. This case study provides an example of an effort to evaluate an informal learning space on the basis of students' usage of the space and the features within the space. Design/methodology/approach:…

The aim of this research was to study the aspects and conditions of physical space which favor or hinder the experience of university mentoring according to the perception of participants. During fieldwork, an ethnographic approach was used, based on direct and indirect observation reflected in research diaries, qualitative interviews, and an ad…

This study explores the relationship between seating quadrants and student performance, including the role of classroom type in the quadrant effect. Data collected from 131 classes taught at 17 colleges of Northwest A&F University in China were analyzed using the ordinary least squares method. The results revealed that where a student sat in a…

This paper investigates the process of designing HyFlex classrooms at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), a graduate-level research university located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, underpinned by the application of the EDUCAUSE Learning Space Rating System (LSRS). This investigation takes the form of a…

Students' seating selection is a significant physical variable that has implications for both teachers and students. These seating preferences have been linked to students' personalities, motivation, and academic performance. However, there is limited knowledge regarding the cultural influences on these preferences. In this exploratory qualitative…

Changes in student expectations and attitudes combined with research on the positive relationship between active engagement and student learning have many college administrators and planners in higher education reconsidering classroom design. One element of classroom design that has the potential to address the unique needs of an increasingly…

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of an active learning space (ALS) in supporting student development of effective communication as a transferable skill. A fourth-year medical science course was taught in two different settings, an ALS and a fixed-row classroom, by the same instructor. Participants preferred the ALS for…

This qualitative study examined a group of 41 bilingual preservice teachers who participated in a multi-year professional learning course lab project. The project implemented the change laboratory (CL) methodological framework during the same semester that the participants were teaching students in their field placements. The data analyzed for…

This article describes an evaluation of a campus wide Active Learning initiative to examine instructors' experiences teaching in Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs) at a Canadian University. ALCs at this university differ in size, layout, and audio-visual equipment. The participants were 21 instructors from different disciplines who had taught…

On September 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, commonly known as the 1994 crime bill. The most far-reaching piece of criminal justice legislation Congress ever passed, the bill incentivized states to pass harsher sentencing laws and build more prisons. Among a slate of punitive and…

The modeling of a modern preschool curriculum is contextually conditioned and represents a complex process. Each kindergarten has its "own identity," its "DNA," just as children, preschool teachers and other participants in the educational process have their "own individual equations." Contextual learning is at the…

The purpose of this research is to explore prospective teachers' perspectives on the physical arrangement of an ideal classroom as a learning environment. A phenomenological design was used in this study to reveal the views of prospective teachers about the components and features of an ideal, desired classroom environment. Fifteen teacher…