The Chronicle of Higher Education: Students

From the issue dated March 7, 2003

Take My Chair (Please)

Experts say students learn more if they are comfortable, but few colleges listen

By THOMAS BARTLETT

Storrs, Conn.

Put a student in a classroom where it's difficult to see the chalkboard or hear the professor. Give the same student an uncomfortable chair and a desk that's too small for a textbook. For good measure, make the room really hot.

Do the opposite for a second student. Make sure that classroom conditions -- temperature, lighting, acoustics, furniture -- are ideal.

Will the second student learn more than the first?

Experts on classroom design say yes. They argue that even the most fascinating lecture or stimulating discussion can be undermined by a bad classroom. Yet at many colleges, classrooms are an afterthought, if they're given any thought at all. They're somewhere below more parking and better cafeteria food on the list of priorities.

That's not to say there aren't some great classrooms -- carefully designed, comfortable learning environments. These are among the places that colleges show off to donors and alumni, to prospective students and their parents. These are the classrooms photographed for Web sites and slick brochures.

Then there are the other classrooms, the ones that aren't part of the tour. Nearly every college has them. They may be older rooms, in desperate need of renovation. Perhaps they weren't intended to be classrooms at all. Whatever the situation, these are the places professors dread being assigned, classrooms that can actually hamper learning.

Many colleges have built new classrooms or renovated old ones to accommodate more technology. In some cases, that has meant dealing with long-overlooked problems. But not always. In fact, the emphasis on whiz-bang electronics has at times overshadowed more important concerns, like making sure every student can see the board. "Planners are still making the same kinds of stupid mistakes," says Ron Baker, who runs a Web site on classroom design (http://www.classroomdesignforum.org). He and other experts say it's time colleges finally realized the pedagogical value of a comfortable chair.

Different Worlds

Jennifer Thomson has classes in two buildings at the University of Connecticut, but they feel like two different worlds.

On Monday mornings, she goes to class in the School of Business, a brand-new, $27-million, 100,000-square foot building with stained-glass atriums -- paid for by General Electric, among other companies -- along with brick archways and a cozy lounge. The place has thoughtful features throughout, from the downstairs cafe to the small "break-out rooms" that allow professors to easily divide students into small groups. The whole interior is beautiful, a blend of steel and light wood that gives hallways and rooms alike a clean, modern feeling. In fact, the students, with their backpacks and ball caps, seem out of place in such grand surroundings.

On Monday afternoons, Ms. Thomson, a senior majoring in communications with a minor in business, makes the five-minute walk from the business school to a building called Arjona. There are no corporate-financed atriums here. Arjona is a cinder-block monster, built in the early 1960s, with dark, cramped hallways, no air conditioning, and classrooms that ignore nearly every rule of good design. Even so, more classes are held here than in any other building on the campus. Vague plans are afoot to raze and replace Arjona, but that won't happen for another five or six years at the earliest, according to officials. Meanwhile, the building remains a big, ugly monument to what's wrong with college classrooms.

Such contrasts are not unique to Connecticut. "Colleges have their best classrooms where they take the alumni and visitors, and then they have the rooms that shouldn't be used as classrooms," says J. Thomas Bowen, associate vice president for finance and administration at the University of Georgia, who is one of the authors of the Classroom Design Manual. Now in its third edition, the book is regarded as the clearest guide on the subject, offering useful recommendations like optimal ceiling height (12 feet for most classrooms) and the right kind of flooring (nonskid tiles are important), along with fussy advice about installing pencil sharpeners (use tamper-resistant screws) and the width of the corkboard strip placed above the chalkboard (two inches). Besides such facts and figures, the book also contains a set of guiding principles for all classrooms, whether they are vast lecture halls or intimate seminar rooms.

The rules are simple:

  • Students should be able to see what's presented.
  • Students should be able to hear what's said, "free from noise and distortions."
  • Students should be comfortable (the manual mentions temperature and furniture among crucial considerations).

The "golden rules," as one of the authors calls them, sound almost too obvious to cite. Yet many classrooms fail to meet even those basic requirements. "You can go to almost any college campus and find examples of bad classrooms," says Mr. Bowen.

Tight Squeeze

Chairs are high on the list of biggest student complaints.

Many classrooms in Arjona have a type of chair that is widely used, but that classroom-design experts can't stand. The tablet-arm chair, as it is called, includes a small desk -- or tablet -- attached to an arm. Now, not all tablet-arm chairs are the objects of scorn. The experts object mainly to those with insufficient desk space. That's exactly the problem with many of the tablet-arm chairs in Arjona, according to students. "If you want to have a textbook and a notebook open at the same time, you're screwed," says Ms. Thomson, who keeps her notebook on the desk while resting the textbook in her lap.

For some students, it's not the desks that are too small, but the seats. Each semester several students complain about not being able to fit into the tablet-arm chairs in Arjona, says Larry Schilling, Connecticut's facilities manager. He guesses that more students have trouble but are too embarrassed to complain. Even for those who can squeeze into the seats, though, the tablet-arm chairs are no joy. "Sitting in an uncomfortable chair does not help the learning process," Mr. Schilling says.

Both the size of the desk and the size of the person were considered when furniture was chosen for the School of Business. The curved, two-foot-wide desks give students plenty of space for textbooks, notebooks, and laptops. (The desks also have electrical outlets and Ethernet ports, for computer-network connections.) Planners considered a variety of chairs before settling on one manufactured by Dauphin with a cushioned seat and "dorsal back" that gives slightly when a student leans on it. To accommodate large people, the chairs -- which cost $300 each -- have wide seats and no arms. That is in keeping with what the Classroom Design Manual suggests: that chairs be able to accommodate students who are between 5-foot-4, 105 pounds, and 6-foot-2, 215 pounds.

Daniel Niemeyer knows all about the right and wrong kinds of desks and chairs. In fact, he has made a career out of advising colleges on how to build better learning environments. His book, Hard Facts on Smart Classroom Design, published this year, features a list of mistakes that colleges frequently make. Tiny desks are on the list. Mr. Niemeyer calls it "ridiculous" to make students use inadequate furniture when alternatives are available. "Oversized tablet-arm chairs are not expensive or hard to come by," he says.

What others dismiss as trivial, he sees as crucial. Mr. Niemeyer, who teaches journalism part time at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has traveled to more than 100 campuses as a classroom-design consultant. His expertise does not come cheap; he charges $900 a day, plus expenses.

The subject he is most passionate about is lighting. Mr. Niemeyer favors a certain type of fixture, called a "parabolic louver," that helps diffuse light throughout a room. Dimmer switches are essential when overhead projectors are being used, he adds. "There is a lot of research that shows that the more light there is in a room, the more likely you are to get interaction. So there is nothing more upsetting to me from a lighting perspective than to see them turn off all the lights to project something on the screen."

There are no parabolic louvers or dimmer switches in Arjona. Instead, long, fluorescent bulbs cast a harsh, uneven glow on the classrooms. "The lighting sort of drains you," says Ms. Thomson. "You go into a class in Arjona and you cringe."

Like choosing the chairs, calibrating the lighting in the School of Business was a painstaking process. A light meter was used to ensure enough light for students to read and take notes, but not enough to cause a glare on their laptop screens. "The lighting is not exotic, but it gives you vertical light rather than horizontal because the latter tends to blind you," says Mark Simon, the building's architect. His firm, Centerbrook Architects and Planners, in Centerbrook, Conn., has designed classroom buildings for Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Nebraska, Williams College, Yale University, and other institutions. "It looks like a simple room, but it's very sophisticated."

The importance of well-lighted classrooms is emphasized on Mr. Baker's Web site. It provides information on aspects of classroom design including how to pick the right overhead projector and how to deal with noisy heating-and-cooling systems. Even new, supposedly state-of-the-art classrooms can have major flaws, according to Mr. Baker, who was a classroom-design specialist at Purdue University's Main Campus for 44 years. One of the most common errors, he says, is setting up the projection screen in a way that makes it impossible for students in the back and middle of the room to see it.

Mr. Baker is genuinely annoyed by bad classroom design, which is the reason he spends hours each week updating his site and answering e-mail messages from readers, services he provides free. As he puts it: "What else matters if the kids can't see or hear?"

It's Getting Hot in Here

Temperature is another pervasive complaint.

Because Arjona is not air-conditioned (with the exception of a few noisy window units), classrooms are sweltering in the late spring and summer. This has become a bigger issue as the university expands its summer course offerings. "Not only is it not good for learning, it's not healthy," says John J. Breen, an associate professor of journalism. He doesn't blame students for nodding off during summer classes in Arjona (it's the heat, not his lectures, of course). As for the window units, they're too noisy to turn on during class, say Mr. Breen and others. To make matters worse, the windows have no screens, so opening them is risky. One professor inadvertently let in a swarm of bees when he cracked a window on a hot day. Class was abruptly adjourned.

Cold weather isn't much better. The heating system in Arjona is cranky and unreliable, either failing to come on or refusing to shut off, alternately freezing and roasting the building's occupants. "You are either wearing your coat or stripping down to a tank top," says Ms. Thomson.

Compare that with the School of Business, where the system keeps the temperature at 70 degrees all the time. No one mentions the temperature there.

Simple Steps

Professors and students at Connecticut agree that classrooms can affect the learning process -- for better and for worse. "I believe you work best when you're in a nice, comfortable environment," says Jack Veiga, a professor of management who oversaw the business school's design and construction. He even agonized over the height of each tiered row of desks (six inches between tiers is ideal, he decided). While such minutiae surely go unnoticed by most students, the overall impression does not. "There's no other place I would rather sit in class," says Jason Gregoire, a senior majoring in business.

The same is not said of Arjona. Steven Varjabedian, a philosophy major who fixes computers on the side, has strong opinions about the building that houses all of his classes this semester. "I dread coming to Arjona," he says. Lindsey Ber-geron, a senior majoring in journalism and political science, concurs. "It's horrible," she says. Ms. Thomson adds, "I'm less likely to skip a class in the business building."

There are a couple of steps that colleges can take to improve classroom design short of constructing a $27-million building, say experts like Mr. Baker. One is simply asking students and professors what they need. Those who use Arjona say better chairs and a few more electric fans in the summer would help a lot. The cost of such improvements would be relatively small -- an important consideration during the current budget crunch at many colleges -- and definitely worthwhile, says Sue Clabaugh, one of the authors of the Classroom Design Manual. "New seating may be a few thousand dollars, but, boy, does it make a difference," says Ms. Clabaugh, who is manager of classroom-technology support at the University of Maryland at College Park.

As an example of how big changes don't have to cost big money, Mr. Niemeyer notes that Rhodes College, in Memphis, recently installed new light fixtures in many of its classrooms. The price? Only a few hundred dollars per room. "They were thrilled with the difference it made," he says.

Experts also recommend having an on-campus advocate for classroom design, someone who works to solve problems that arise.

The goal is for all students to have the reaction Ms. Thomson had the first time she walked into the School of Business at Connecticut. "I thought, 'Hey, this place is perfect for learning.'"

LEARNING BY DESIGN

Here's where to find more information on classroom design:

http://chronicle.com
Section: Students
Volume 49, Issue 26, Page A36

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