Lectures to Group Work - What is the Impact on Space?

Institutions are addressing the changes in teaching and learning styles and are seeing success. For example,  the TEAL (Technology Enhanced Active Learning)project at MIT developed two new classrooms, both of which were focused on addressing the changing student behaviour requirements. The project noted that “the teaching methods used in the TEAL classroom produced about twice the average normalized learning gains for low, intermediate, and high-scoring students when compared to traditional instruction”. These are remarkable results and indicate the potential gains universities and colleges can make by ensuring their teaching methods and teaching spaces reflect the changing student learning behaviours.

From a space management perspective, there is an obvious potential issue with wanting to change the way students are taught - essentially, it changes space requirements. 

For example, the lecture theatre teaching space is, arguably, the most efficient use of teaching space when considering the number of students they can accommodate per m2. But the group-style teaching rooms, due to the nature of the activities that they must accommodate, require much more space.

AUDE estimates that a lecture theatre capacity can be estimated by accounting for 1 student per each 1m2 whilst a seminar room capacity typically accounts 1 student per 2.25m2. From a space management perspective, group-style teaching often requires a greater m2 per student than seminar rooms. For example, the TEAL classrooms accommodate 1 student per 7.81m2, almost 8 times the space of that required by a lecture theatre.

Space norms are there for guidance purposes, as more or less space can be achieved depending on the layout, design, furniture, and objective but can t a useful indicator of what can be achieved.

If institutions want to address the changing student learning behaviour and focus on group/interactive/discussion/gamified learning teaching, they are going to need to replace the space-efficient lecture theatre with the space-hungry seminar/group/interactive/discussion/gamified teaching spaces.

For this fictional scenario, ABC University has discussed future teaching space design and teaching methods with both students and lecturers. There is an agreed consensus that teaching is moving away from lecture theatre style teaching and there is now a greater demand for interactive group teaching. All have agreed that they would like the new style teaching rooms to accommodate a maximum of 42 students, each in groups of 6 with the lecturer positioned in the centre of the room – similar to that as shown in the TEAL teaching space.

This change in teaching space demand results in there no longer being a requirement for the lecture theatres currently available within ABC University. All activities that had been accommodated in the lecture theatres will now be accommodated within the new interactive group teaching rooms.

By reducing the maximum teaching space capacity, the larger activities have had to be split into multiple groups, significantly increasing the total number of activities that require timetabling each week.

Using the AUDE estimates referred to earlier, we can estimate that the lecture theatre space makes up a total NIA of 720m2 (Total capacity X space norm/720×1). In comparison the New Interactive Group Teaching Rooms will require an NIA 1800m2, this is a 1080m2 difference and more than 2.5 times the current teaching requirement.

Although this scenario is a simple example, it does demonstrate the extreme pressure a move away from lecture theatre teaching could have on an institution and its estate. Not only would there be an extreme increase in the amount of teaching space required, there would also be a similar increase in demand for staff hours to cover this increase in activities. An increase in space requirements and staffing hours would consequentially have a significant impact on a university’s budgetary requirements too.