Guest Blogger: I have this fantastic new collaborative learning classroom. Now what?

Walt Hurley is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has taught courses, including his Lactation Biology course, at Illinois for over 30 years. He flipped that course long before the concept of a flipped classroom came into the mainstream of academia. His online Lactation Biology website has been used world-wide since the mid-1990s and is used as a resource by many teaching similar courses. His contributions to teaching have been recognized through teaching awards from the University of Illinois and from national and international professional organizations. 

I have taught an upper level undergraduate course in lactation biology for over 30 years at the University of Illinois. Long ago, my approach was to emulate those who had taught me as an undergraduate by lecturing. By all accounts, I was not a bad lecturer, but nothing special.  Eventually I got bored with hearing myself lecture and thought how uninteresting it must be for my students. I thought that there must be a better way. I have the advantage of having two 2-hour weekly class sessions, giving me plenty of time to have class meet at the campus dairy farm, which is only a mile south of campus, or develop other in-class activities. I experimented with a range of student activities over the years. Over 15 years ago I revamped the course to one where most of the content material is online and students spend 75-80% of the in-class time working in groups on case studies, discussions, projects, and various types of presentations. I have done only limited lecturing in recent years. Since the mid-1990s I have taught in a traditional class room with bolted-down tables, with chairs in rows facing the front of the room, a chalk board, LCD projector and resident computer. The room was designed long before students were bringing laptops or cell phones to class.

Room 131 Animal Sciences Laboratory - then

To conduct the in-class group work in that room meant that the students had to figure out how to arrange themselves in a fashion where they could accomplish the goals of the activity. I would start each semester with a map of the room showing where each group was to form a circle. Some would have to turn their chairs around and face the back of the room, or cluster up at the ends of the tables. Inconvenient, but they did it with little effort and after a couple of weeks automatically would sit with their group members and quickly arrange into their group area when we started the discussion or activity. My role typically was to act as a resource for their group efforts. I would continually walk around the perimeter of the room answering questions, listening to their conversations to make sure they were on track, or offering suggestions. Any group that sat in the center of the room was always hard to get to.

Some of their presentations of solutions to various types of cases involved developing what I call mosaics. They would make drawings illustrating the elements of the case, their interpretation of the information, and their solutions to the case. We would tape the pictures on the walls around the classroom and they would be expected to walk up to the wall and explain their drawings and conclusions to the rest of the class. This required some logistical planning on my part to minimize the time it took for the class to tape about 150 drawings on the walls.  For their project presentations, the groups typically would stand at the front of the room and talk to the class. 

Then something happened. A couple of years ago I was in a campus meeting where they started talking about remodeling some classrooms.  In addition, there was discussion on making some of the existing classrooms into flexible collaborative learning spaces. The campus has since then called these iFLEX rooms. Although there are several types of iFLEX rooms that are being developed at Illinois, most of them have movable chairs and tables, lots of white boards, lots of technology around the room, and less emphasis on there being a “front” to the room.   

Room 131 Animal Sciences Laboratory - now

As it turned out, our classroom was already on the list to be renovated. I immediately volunteered it to be turned into an iFLEX room. Reconstruction started in the summer of 2015 and we were able to start holding classes in the room in January, 2016. We were able to expand the space a little allowing us to maintain room capacity similar to the old room. There are 12 pods of 6 tables and chairs each. All tables and chairs are on wheels. Ten pods are around the perimeter of the room and associated with flat screen monitors. Nearly every inch of wall space between the monitors is covered with glass whiteboards. There is a main screen at what is considered the “front" of the room. The instructor can control all the screens with the potential for a group on one side of the room to be able to display their work to another group on the other side, and all other combinations of displaying around the room.

So now I have this fantastic collaborative learning space. I was already doing a lot of collaborative learning in the old space.  Have things changed? Absolutely yes. Many of the activities are very similar to what I had been doing before. Now I encourage students to bring their laptops/cell phones to use in their activities. For example, on the first day of class I had an unplanned visitor from South Africa who conducts study tours of Kruger National Park and other wildlife preserves. Students were already sitting in groups. I assigned each table one of the African Big Five animals to quickly lookup anything related to lactation or reproduction and develop a brief presentation. Then I had our guest share his personal knowledge and experiences about those animals with the class. The new room made such an effort considerably more streamlined, efficient and meaningful for the students. And, it was something that I could do to take advantage of a last-minute opportunity with minimal pre-planning.

As for those mosaics, there no longer are blank walls on which to tape their drawings.  I now have them gathering images from the web to develop a digital mosaic that we can display around the room as they explain their conclusions about the case. One observation that I made was that many students would make notes on their laptop. Then when they were called on to talk to the class they used those notes as their reference. While this limits their impromptu discussion, they do feel much more confident in making their presentation and include more detailed information. 

Gathering material for a presentation

I still do not lecture much, however, I often share information with them about their projects and activities. It is much easier for me to move around the room to engage with each of the groups.  Easier to hand out materials. Easier for the students to work on projects that require developing some physical outcome. By default, students are sitting in a circle and therefore no one in a group gets left out from the discussions. 

What about their group presentations?  To date they have only given one presentation. I had them stand in the middle of the room while talking and making their presentation. After the presentations they were challenged to move around the room to view more closely the work of the other groups. I continue to develop ideas on how we can use the room and the technology even more effectively, and engage the students even more fully in sharing their work.

At this point, the responses of the students to the new room has been very positive. Initially some had to get use to the idea that there was no front of the room and that they could not just sit mindlessly and stare at a point at the front of the room. They could choose to look at the various screens, the projector screen or the instructor on the move. Some are still disconcerted by the expectation that they actually move their heads to look around the room.

How have other instructors managed? Aside from some initial minor technical concerns of making sure the laptop that they brought in to run the projector and monitors worked in that room, they too seem to like the room. I feel that many of them who traditionally only lectured are starting to see other pedagogical approaches that they might use in such a flexible learning environment. And those who were already incorporating group work and other activities into their courses are coming up with interesting ways to enrich those experiences even more in this new environment.

What can I say! This is great after so many years of being bolted to the floor. Every class session, I am coming up with new ideas on how to take advantage of the room. I look forward to having those ideas keep coming.