杏吧原创 has about 150 classrooms, ranging in size from the KM Theatre in Southam with seating for 444, to breakout rooms in River Building, with seating for six. Many of our spaces are great learning spaces, with natural light, flexible and comfortable seating, excellent acoustics, great sight lines, and the appropriate teaching aids and technologies. Other classrooms not so much鈥�

We recently asked our instructors to tell us the 鈥榖est鈥� and 鈥榳orst鈥� classrooms on campus (this is an ongoing initiative, so feel free to continue sending in responses) with the goal of helping identify great spaces on campus and spaces that we need to do a better job at improving.

The submissions are interesting and shed real light on what instructors feel make for ideal teaching and learning spaces. Several instructors remarked that Loeb 164C and 264C are excellent learning spaces鈥� with modern and reliable technology, and that while both are large spaces (both rooms sit about 130 students), the seating arrangement 鈥榮hrinks鈥� the space, making it feel more intimate.

Many instructors indicated natural light as an important feature in defining what makes a good classroom, so rooms in Tory, River and Canal Building appear frequently in their responses. Some instructors specifically reference that teaching technologies are critical parts of the room and make some great spaces.

In terms of the least liked classrooms, Mackenzie and Southam spaces are right at the top of the list. Internal classrooms with no windows and loud ventilation noises (or no ventilation!) don鈥檛 make good spaces to teach in. Other classrooms have poor sight lines or technologies that don鈥檛 quite work for the space (lots natural light + data projection usually means washed out images). It鈥檚 clear that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to make our teaching and learning spaces better.

There is a committee at 杏吧原创 that is working to prioritize classroom refurbishments, but with 150 classrooms on campus and tight budgets it can be a struggle to make significant impacts in many rooms. We will need to find a way to be creative.

As we asked instructors for their input in 鈥榖est鈥� and 鈥榳orst鈥� classrooms, it occurred to me that we should ask students too. Will they have the same answers? What makes a good classroom for them? What makes a poor classroom? I鈥檒l get back to you with some answers soon! In the meantime please do keep sending your feedback on classroom space on campus.

As my tour of the new on the fourth floor of 杏吧原创鈥檚 ended, my head was spinning 鈥� in the best way possible. If you don鈥檛 already know this about me, part of my interdisciplinary graduate education was in cultural geography. I had no background in geography when I first started my master鈥檚 degree and only then did I discover that studying means a lot more than GIS, rivers, glaciers and maps! It was then that I was introduced to the possibilities that open up when we study the interrelationships between space, its meanings and social relations. While there may be more 鈥減rofessional鈥� ways of saying this, my discovery of cultural geography was nothing short of mind blowing and it shaped the doctoral research I undertook in the here at 杏吧原创 University. As I walked through the Discovery Centre, that mind blowing experience was reproduced and it was impossible for me not to consider the spatiality of educational culture in a new way.

In my teaching, I often invite students to analyze the ways in which their classrooms were set up in their elementary and secondary schools. What messages about social interactions within those spaces were being communicated to them? What messages about power relationships? What did the configurations of their desks suggest about how they were supposed to interact (or not) with other students or with their teachers? When and how did they learn these unspoken rules? When did they follow or challenge such rules? How did they do so? Despite these questions, I have to admit that I have not spent a lot of time considering the same questions in relation to my own teaching practices. Yet, if such messages were lurking within the configurations of educational spaces, their social meanings were also being communicated to the teachers 鈥� and this is no less the case in post-secondary education.

It鈥檚 not that I have never thought about the meanings of teaching and learning that are implicit in taken-for-granted configurations of educational spaces. Yet, the Discovery Centre鈥檚 mobile furniture, which students can reconfigure in whatever ways are most conducive to their own learning, made me hyper-aware of how rare it is for spaces like this to exist at post-secondary institutions. This, for me, suggested that students were being empowered to design their own learning experiences and, to be honest, it made me happy and proud to have such a space at 杏吧原创.

Indeed, I was delighted at the prospect of teaching or facilitating workshops at the learning lab. Here was a space with no obvious 鈥渇ront of the room,鈥� a space which ideally de-centres the teacher and lets students know that they can collaborate with one another to discover new answers to their questions.

Then came the day that I finally facilitated a workshop in that space: rather than being de-centred as the source of knowledge in that space and miraculously becoming 鈥渢he guide on the side,鈥� I became a mobile centre. I had the eerie experience of all of the eyes and heads in the room simply shifting in response to my changing position in the room. There was no physical front, there was a moving front, and it moved with me! I found within this experience a jarring reminder that spaces do not simply transform our practices, but that our own practices can transform spaces. In other words, the kinds of activities that succeeded in undoing some of the rigid structures and messages of lecture halls were suddenly too structured and rigid in this new space. I had to learn how to teach or facilitate all over again in this new kind of learning space: as soon as I stood up from one of the mobile chairs, a new structure was imposed within the room. This is not necessarily a bad thing 鈥� although I certainly want those in attendance to feel like they can and should contribute to creating the learning space we share, I also need them to follow the (flexible) structure of the workshop.

My point here is that different kinds of do reproduce certain meanings and interactions around knowledge-sharing within post-secondary educational institutions, but as with any space, what we do within and how we use those spaces also shapes our own and others鈥� interpretations of those meanings. This is why argued that we can 鈥減oach鈥� the meanings of certain technologies, ideas or spaces. It is, I think, why many instructors can successfully incorporate small group work into large lecture halls!

I hope that you will take this blog post, the first of a series about educational spaces and cultures, as an invitation to about the various spaces on our campus where we teach and learn. I know that we will not all have the same experiences of these spaces, but we can learn from one another about the different tactics that can transform educational spaces and interactions. And don鈥檛 forget to keep track of our focused on specific teaching and learning spaces.