The Mosaic Initiative takes getting feedback on our classrooms seriously. Feedback is a means to constantly improve the spaces we build and support. We elicit feedback from faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students on all of our Mosaic and traditional classrooms in a variety of ways that we will share in future blogs. Today we’d like to share how we leverage cohort reports to improve classrooms across Indiana University.
As part of our Mosaic Faculty Fellows program, each cohort of Fellows generates a collaborative report that provides feedback on both Mosaic and traditional classrooms on their campus. The Fellows address the following prompts on their own, over the course of the second semester:
Please tell us about your experience teaching in your Mosaic classroom (images/photos are encouraged):
- How did the classroom support your teaching/your students’ learning?
- What obstacles did you encounter in the space and how did you address them?
- What affordances in the space did you use the most/were your favorite feature of the classroom? Why?
- What would you change about the space/add to the space?
Please provide general suggestions for any classroom:
- If you could pick two tools, (furniture, any type of white boards, screens, clocks, markers, VR, etc.) and put in multiple classrooms to support active learning what would they be? Why?
- What small changes can we make to our traditional spaces to support active learning in those classrooms?
- What do you see as the most significant issue(s) we need to address as we move forward with the support and development of IU classrooms?
- Any additional general comments about any spaces on your campus.
This feedback is gathered from each individual Fellow and compiled to create their cohort report. The report can be lengthy as it contains detailed feedback from each Fellow. Therefore, we do our best to summarize some portions of the report while also keeping each voice in it’s unedited entirety. The latest Bloomington Cohort Report is a great example of this.
Our Learning Spaces directer, Julie Johnston, finds the faculty feedback from the cohort reports integral to the development of space planning and designing. According to Julie, “We share the cohort report with all our stakeholders including colleagues in the architect’s office, facilities, and space planning. Our learning space design team use the feedback as their driving principles when designing new spaces.”
The Learning Spaces team is highly responsive to the cohort report making it a catalyst for change for all Indiana University classrooms. To learn more about the Mosaic Initiative, visit mosaic.iu.edu or to keep an eye on what we are up to, follow us on instagram @Mosaic_IU
