Most university classrooms feature either a traditional lecture-style layout with tables and chairs arranged in front-facing rows or round tables permanently arranged in groups. Some universities, though, are building classrooms of the future that have highly flexible furniture and integrated technology. These innovative classrooms can be reconfigured for multiple uses, such as lecture-style teaching, having students work together in groups, and engaging in a whole-class discussion. People assume that these flexible classrooms automatically result in better teaching and learning, but there has been little research into their effect on faculty pedagogy and student behavior. During this project, five undergraduate engineering instructors at the University of Michigan will be supported as they transition from teaching in a traditional classroom to a new flexible classroom. These instructors will be supported to learn about teaching practices that leverage the classroom flexibility and allow them to be more responsive to students. The impact of classroom flexibility on both faculty pedagogy and student behavior will be a key research focus of this project. Such research will generate evidence to inform the design of flexible classrooms, to support instructors using new pedagogies in these flexible classrooms, and ultimately to improve student learning and behavior.
More specifically, this project will rigorously examine faculty pedagogy (including use of both active learning and responsive teaching, in which instructors elicit and respond to students' thinking) and student behavior in five undergraduate engineering courses. These courses will all be taught in a traditional lecture hall during the first year of the project and in a flexible classroom during the second year. Before and throughout the second year of the project, professional development will take place to support faculty in using the flexible classrooms. The research team will investigate changes in faculty pedagogy through a new classroom observation protocol that captures instances of active learning and responsive teaching, through instructor interviews that investigate how an instructor enacts responsive teaching, and through a survey for students to report their perceptions of responsive teaching. The research team will also examine students' interpretation (framing) of group learning activities by analyzing students' discourse during such activities in both the traditional and flexible classrooms. This project will further the nascent field of responsive teaching in engineering by providing future researchers with a standardized responsive teaching observation protocol. It will also provide engineering faculty, professional developers, and classroom designers with evidence-based ways to enact responsive teaching, implement group learning activities, and effectively design and use flexible classrooms.
