basic room design

[gusl]

Do they have no user testing when they design classrooms? The least they could do is make it easy to set the projector's image higher.

Is there an easy way to lift the back rows of a classroom, stadium-style?

If UBC had a vertically-challenged students association, this would be one of their top issues.

Comments

[gfish.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of this has to do with older classrooms from before projectors were common. (Which has only become ubiquitous in the last 5-10 years, after all.) [Black|White]boards can't be high for obvious reasons.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

They didn't have the notion of a podium?

[chrisamaphone]

me: "i always get confused when this gfish person posts on gustavo's livejournal, because his icon looks like bhudson."

wjl: "that's not what bhudson looks like. bhudson looks like trees!"

[chrisamaphone]

(actually i guess his icon is a flower with a background of some green and brown stuff but at first glance i think it basically looks like trees)

[leigh-a.livejournal.com]

In classes where lecturers write on the board, those chalkboards that slide up make a world of difference, regardless of the room design. My STAT 305 class used to be crammed into MATH 105 and if you didn't show up early and get a seat in the front quarter of the room, you didn't get to see any of the notes until the prof started sliding the boards up once was finished with them. That one change made an enormous difference.

That doesn't help with projectors though.

[leigh-a.livejournal.com]

Uhhh, so if you were in the back you still didn't get to see the notes until the prof slid the board up but I meant that early in the term he didn't do it at all and then you just didn't see anything for the whole class.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

I cropped the trees out.

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Laser pointers are the devil. But yeah, big rooms need to be auditoriums or else only the first row can see anything.

[isomorphisms.livejournal.com]

My school has theatre-style classrooms, with the floor sloped. This is better for students, but makes things more difficult for an instructor who would otherwise use the edges of the room as examples of orthogonal coordinate axes :)

[raflacerda.livejournal.com]

Harvard classrooms are pretty good:
http://www.eypaedesign.com/resources/projects/21_1.jpg

Most of my college's classrooms are faithful replicas of that one, but I think they had to pay Harvard for the design.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I think CMU has rooms like that too, though I can't remember where.
So did Bucknell (Taylor Hall?).

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

they look quite different in person.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I really don't envy the undergrads here!

[simrob.livejournal.com]

I find that most trees look about the same in person. Maybe that means I am racist against trees.