Open-plan offices — cubicle farms — make it hard to concentrate, say workers in a new survey. There’s no place to have a private conversation. It’s noisy. Open classrooms are the norm in K-12 schools, writes Anya Kamenetz in Hechinger’s Digital/Edu blog.
A new study (sponsored by an office-furniture company, Steelcase, so take it with a grain of salt) compared students in classrooms designed for “active learning,” including dynamic grouping of seats in small and large groups, multisensory engagement at different stations around the room, as well as the use of screens and other technology, to the more traditional “rows of seats” classrooms that are all but disappearing now. “90.32% of students perceived an increase in their engagement in the class with layouts designed for active learning, 80.65% said the new layout increased their ability to achieve a higher grade, and 70.04% their motivation to attend class.”
Even these layouts don’t give students a chance to “be alone with a teacher or with their thoughts,” Kamenetz writes. “So much classroom management effort is really spent on managing the noise-pollution issue, while sound privacy matters when a teacher needs to give a student critical feedback or just time to reflect on a question.”