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On Aug. 27, construction will begin on a $9 million collaborative-learning building that studies show will help students better retain information they have learned in class.
The Collaborative Teaching and Learning Building, the second phase of the College of Education building plan that began November 2009, will open in fall 2013 and include six classrooms. The new building will include one classroom designed in the Student Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs, or “SCALE UP,” classroom style, which focuses on the needs of students by promoting more student-to-student interaction instead of student-teacher interaction.
The project is funded by about $6 million in General Obligations bonds, taxpayer money, and about $3 million in UNM bonds. UNM bonds are issued by the University and, in the past, were paid back in part by student facility fees. The new building will be located near the social sciences building, Anderson School of Management, Technology and Education Center and Travelstead Hall.
Studies from other universities around the U.S., such as the University of Pittsburgh, Florida State University and Penn State University, show that students’ success rates improved in courses taught in the new SCALE-UP classroom style. Some of the courses that show increased success rates include physics, biology, math and engineering.
At Clemson University, about 44 percent of students dropped or failed an introductory calculus course prior to fall 2006. That rate dropped to 22 percent after the class was taught using the SCALE-UP model.
The SCALE-UP classroom will be on the third floor of the Collaborative Teaching and Learning Building and can hold up to 126 students. It will include computers or laptops at each of the 14 round tables, each of which seats nine students, and an instructor station in the center of the classroom.
UNM President Robert Frank, who implemented the same classroom design at Kent State University, said the new classroom style has grown out of the online-class community, where students often work together and discuss projects and assignments. He said that allowing students to engage with each other promotes more active learning and improves student success rates.
“We know active learners have better retention of learning material, and so that change is very positive in my view and most educators’ views,” he said.
Frank said the change in classroom styles is being incorporated in schools around the world and that the University will continue to move toward updated classroom styles but will keep some traditional classroom designs.
“This is sort of like the industrial revolution of higher education,” he said. “It’s a whole big change of how we do everything. It’s a very exciting time.”
College of Education administrator Diane Gwinn said the class will be split into three subgroups at each table and that projects will be broken up into three parts. She said students will work together on their portion of in-class projects, collaborate with the rest of the group and then present their findings, questions or comments to whole class.
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Gwinn said this style will allow students to work together while the classroom instructor works individually with each of the groups. She said this teaching style has proven to help students better retain class material.
“Studies have found that students help teach each other than better than the old ‘sage-on-the-stage’ concept,” she said.
Gwinn said that although only one of the classrooms utilizes the SCALE-UP design, each of the classrooms will have furniture that can be moved easily so teachers can rearrange the classroom according to their teaching styles. She said choosing the classroom designs began in summer 2011 and was a collaborative effort between faculty from Arts and Sciences, Anderson School of Management and the College of Education.
“We spent the summer of 2011, at least weekly and sometimes more, to do all of the design and come up with what most of the faculty really thought we need for the next 40 to 50 years,” she said.
“I’m really excited about it.”
Gwinn said faculty members found it necessary to build a new building because many of the classrooms on campus are outdated and don’t work with the new teaching styles that most faculty members are looking to use in their classes.
“Some of the classrooms have chairs that are bolted to the floor,” she said. “A lot of the classrooms need to be updated and we had this money and it was time to build one more building on campus that would allow for new concepts of teaching.”
The building will be used for a wide range of classes, but the College of Education will have scheduling priority between 4 and 10 p.m. This helps accommodate graduate students, who are teachers during the day and take classes during the evening in order to complete their master’s degrees or Ph.D.s, Gwinn said.
