Yu Kay Law, Assistant Professor, Natural Sciences & Mathematics–IU East
Today we welcome to the Mosaic Blog, Yu Kay Law, an Assistant professor of Chemistry, Natural Sciences and Mathematics on the Indiana University – East campus. Yu Kay participated in our first annual Mosaic Design Symposium. Along with Mosaic Fellows from many of Indiana University’s seven campuses, Yu Kay engaged in a day of workshops and conversation about the future designs of Indiana University’s learning spaces. Below, Yu Kay, shares his experiences and insights from the Mosaic Design Symposium, which was held June 15th on the IUPUI campus.
I was invited to attend this symposium which promised to look at how classrooms are designed. Having worked through the Mosaic Faculty Fellows program and the year-long series of meetings and interactions with Tracey Birdwell and Kelly Scholl, it was clear that this would be an interesting event.
When I arrived, we were assigned to different groups based on the specific type of classroom (i.e., medium-sized classroom, computer lab, and so) we were most interested in redesigning. I was assigned to the medium classroom design group, where we examined possible designs for classrooms that seat between 25 and 75 students. I was particularly interested in this type of classroom, as my Principles of Chemistry lecture classes typically have enrollment in the 40-90 student range. I worked with three other faculty in my group from the Bloomington and IUPUI campuses – this was an interesting change in perspective for me, allowing me to meet with Mosaic Fellows from other cohorts and who were not from the regional campuses.
After a brief introduction, we began by examining photographs of various types of active learning classrooms from a number of different institutions, and looked for features to include (or not include) into our design. This was followed by a lively discussion, during which we discovered our common views on the benefits (and detractions) from the rooms shown. From this discussion, we were able to extract some common themes for our classroom design: a tiered room system with larger tables and boards on the side walls that can be used to share information.
Design Symposium participants in the Medium Classroom group collaborating on their design.
Once we had a general idea for the type of room we wanted to design, it was then time to design the room, but in a way that was free from technical and financial restrictions. We also drew on our experiences of facilitating group work during our tenure as Mosaic Fellows. Some of the other lessons that I learnt from faculty who used tablet-chairs with wheels, for instance, was that it was often too unstructured to facilitate group work, despite the initial apparent flexibility of that design. While we liked classroom designs that facilitated active learning, we also considered a couple of other factors. First, we wanted a design where whole-class presentations and occasional lectures can be presented to support a range of pedagogical approaches. We also wanted a design that enables the instructor to have “clean” sight lines across the room, so they have full view of their students (and the students of them, too).
As a result, our group came up with a design similar to the room where the symposium was held (Hine Hall, Room 118, IUPUI), slightly scaled down to meet the needs of a mid-sized class.
We also pooled our expertise from teaching in different disciplines. For example, based on feedback from informatics faculty and their concerns with a complete “bring-your-own-device” approach to computers, the decision was made to incorporate retractable computers to the tables that the students shared. These were also designed to be shared with the class via a “4×4” grid of screens at the front of the room. This “screen”, made of an array of 16 monitors (in a 4×4 array), could be used to show each group’s screen, an individual groups’ screen, or the instructor’s monitor.
The final part of the symposium gave each faculty design group an opportunity to share their design ideas. The variety of ideas (many of which I would have never considered), went beyond simply facilitating active learning. For example, the “large lecture hall” group presented a design that facilitated active learning via flexible seating. However, it was also based on the idea of a circular classroom design, where a central stage/podium area, rather a traditional lecture hall design, allowed for greater equality of access to the instructor. Another example was the “inside-out” design offered by the “computer lab” group. Their design included desks that enabled students to view other students’ desks. Every group presented insightful ideas that can help inform the design of, and conversation about, future active learning classrooms.
Through the Mosaic Design Symposium, faculty were given the opportunity to brainstorm new ideas for classroom design. But just as importantly, my faculty colleagues and I were able to share ideas and experiences with faculty from across the University, representing a variety of disciplines and teaching experience. These attributes made the symposium a valuable learning experience, and one I thoroughly enjoyed.
In mid-October, the Fellows will be presenting their designs to the Architect’s office to further engage with these ideas. Our next Mosaic Design Symposium, will occur in late Spring 2019 and will be open to all Indiana University instructors. Let us know if you wish to join us!! Keep up with all the Mosaic Initiative is doing by following us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and of course, by subscribing to this blog page in the upper right.
Introducing a new topic to your students can be the perfect opportunity to ask them to share what they are thinking and get a glimpse into their preconceived notions about that topic. Knowing what students know, don’t know, and misunderstand about a subject or an idea can be a helpful guide for shaping your teaching to be responsive to your student’s level of prior knowledge. When I have placed my students in small groups and given them a prompt to discuss, this has occasionally resulted in not much talking. I have however, had better results when I’ve asked students to search for an image that would answer the prompt. Solstice, a wireless sharing software, has allowed me to make this change in the way I manage small group discussions. In asking students to find images with Solstice, I’m able to encourage more quality discussions among student groups.
In my physics courses, when I introduce the concept of newtonian motion, I ask my students to get into small groups and share about an experience where newtonian motion may not seem logical to a 6-year-old. The goal of the discussion is to bring out unseen forces such as friction, drag, etc. Often times these conversations start and stop with “pushing (an object) across a flat surface.” They could come up with some basic concepts, but I knew my students had more to offer, I just had to figure out how to get it out of them.
Rather than asking students to share an experience, I started asking students to work as a group to find an image that demonstrates the experience. Instead of sharing the first thought that came to their minds, students worked in their groups to discuss what to search, which image to choose, and if the image was the best representation of what they were looking for; the deeper thinking I was aiming to get. Once students found and agreed upon the image(s) they want to use, they then shared them with the class via Solstice.
Using Solstice helped students facilitate an even more engaging discussion. For example, consider my “newtonian motion” small group discussion prompt; students were able to identify and hide duplicate images to narrow down the images that best supported the discussion topic. Without prompting them, students started making stacks of images that had the same “hidden” force and were able to categorize the images into three categories. Going through this process helped students identify the common “hidden” forces many students forget about when working problems within this unit.
With Solstice available in the classroom, there is the capability for anyone in my classroom to wirelessly connect any device they have to the front of the room and share their content. Solstice can be a powerful tool for any number of active learning activities. If you are unsure if the classrooms you teach in have Solstice installed, check the Solstice list to see where it is available on your campus. And, if you are interested in more active learning classroom resources, visit https://mosaic.iu.edu/resources. Finally, if you have ever taught with Solstice and want to share your own experiences, please comment below or contact us if interested in sharing that experience in your own blog post.
“I was scheduled in a new-to-me classroom this semester, so I went to visit it in person like you suggested. When I got there, I found that my students will be sitting at collaborative tables of 6 with a collaboration display at each table. …” – IU Faculty
This is an example of several instructor emails I have received recently, followed by, “I’m so excited!” or “What do I do with them?” and several reactions in between. So, I think it’s time to share some more ideas.
Student Building classroom SB015 on the Bloomington campus has 16 student tables with collaboration screens and seats 96 students.
One of the easiest ways to use group collaboration screens in a classroom is to ask students to collaborate on a product or in response to a prompt. This could mean collaboratively searching for evidence in support of a statement. Or it could mean aggregating individual ideas into a single, shared document. Another possibility could be collaborating to create a group presentation.
One classroom activity that can be especially enhanced with collaboration screens is peer review. When asking groups of students to collaborate in class, it can be difficult for an individual instructor (even with TAs!!) to get around to each group and provide them feedback, but collaboration screens can help address this challenge. For example, imagine each group – in response to a discussion prompt – has collaborated to create a Google doc; using collaboration screens to facilitate this group writing allows everyone in the group to simultaneously contribute to and view a single document.
An application like Google Docs also allows documents to be quickly and easily shared between groups, with the subsequent peer review process also enhanced by collaboration screens (i.e., group members can simultaneously view and comment on a single document). Using collaboration screens in this way also avoids the need for groups to physically switch tables (not insignificant, especially in a large class where asking students to physically move from one table to another can detract from valuable class time).
In providing feedback, students also informally receive feedback. When students review another group’s work they are able to see how some of their peers addressed the same prompt. Students might realize that the other group addressed the prompt using a totally different approach or produced an even more rigorous artifact than their own team did. This new perspective on the original assignment that feedback provides can be leveraged to improve students’ original group assignment. Instructors can ask students who have reviewed a peer’s work, to take their new knowledge and make changes their own collaborative work.
Collaboration screens are a great way to facilitate peer feedback. Have you successfully utilized group collaboration screens in your course? Share your ideas in the comments below or contact us about writing your own blog and share your ideas with others. Interested in more resources about active learning? Follow us onTwitter andInstagram, subscribe to the blog, and read more athttps://mosaic.iu.edu.
Kelly Hanson – Lecturer, Kelley School of Business
Today we welcome to the Mosaic Blog, Kelly Hanson who is a Lecturer in the Communication Skills Department of the Kelley School of Business. Recently, Kelly participated in our first Annual Mosaic Design Symposium. Along with Mosaic Fellows from many of Indiana University’s seven campuses, Kelly engaged in a day of workshops and conversation about the future designs of Indiana University’s learning spaces. Below, Kelly, shares her experiences with her “small classroom” design group.
What would our college classrooms look like if we had no limits? What if funding was not a concern; if space was readily available; if advanced technologies were easy to procure and simple to use?
In June, the Mosaic Design Symposium posed these questions to Mosaic’s Faculty Fellows. We spent a day brainstorming, designing, and imagining our ideal classroom space. Moveable furniture? Sure. Green building materials? Check. Computers and screens that students can use? Add it in.
The beauty of this exercise was that we did not limit ourselves to the practical. Instead of starting with what classrooms are, we asked instead: what can the classroom be? Armed only with our imaginations and some whiteboard markers, we set off to design our dream classroom.
Our small group consisted of four intrepid instructors from disparate IU campuses: Bloomington, Kokomo, Columbus, and Indianapolis. We all teach in different fields, and our courses have divergent goals.
We began by looking at images of some models of active learning classrooms and sharing our own experiences. We liked mobility. Windows were a must. We needed storage space for tools to engage students—portable white boards, tablets, and writing materials. We needed screens to project PowerPoints and student work.
Our group collaborating at the Mosaic Design Symposium
And then, we started to think outside of the limits of our own experiences. What about the physical space of the building itself? What about the area immediately outside our classrooms? Study rooms would be helpful. Green energy and environmentally friendly architecture would be cool. A nearby coffee station would be nice. And wouldn’t it be neat if students in fields like engineering, urban planning, and architecture could use the building itself as a learning tool? And so, we began to dream.
Our boards showing the tiny house drawn on the left and the classroom with surrounding study spaces on the right.
Inspired by “tiny houses,” we created a pipedream project: an energy efficient house containing 2 active-learning classrooms, 1 large study lounge, 6 small breakout study rooms, and a small coffee bar. The classroom itself held exciting possibilities: floor-to-ceiling white boards to allow students to write and share, moveable desks to make group projects easier, huddle boards that allow groups to write and share their work were just a few of our amenities.
Our dream classrooms draw on familiar technology in new ways, creating active learning classrooms that engage students in the learning process. Similar to IU’s other Mosaic Classrooms, they open up the possibilities for classroom engagement, using Solstice to allow students to project their computer screens to the shared classroom screens and offering white boards for students to write on and share with the class
Our white board with inside classroom details
But our tiny house departs pretty radically from the conventions of classroom and building design seen across IU’s campuses. We were most excited by the possibilities afforded by our “in-between” spaces that surround the classroom: students walk out of class and into a study area where they can work, collaborate, and converse. Small study rooms allow for convenient group meetings or conversations with the teacher. And then there’s the coffee bar: our dream coffee bar offers cold brew coffee on tap and students simply scan their IDs to purchase.
Our white board with surrounding study spaces shown.
I’d wager that to the casual observer, this all seems a bit over the top: an entire small building is a luxurious use of precious campus space, green building can be expensive, and the technology to make our coffee bar feasible is still in its infancy, only recently rolled out by companies like Amazon or Whole Foods.
I’ll grant you that it makes the budget-oriented part of my brain spin. But I still have to ask: why not? If we want our students to learn new ideas, chart new courses, and create a new world when they leave our classrooms, shouldn’t we also think outside the box about where that learning happens in the first place.
“Thinking outside the box” isn’t just a metaphor here. Our tiny house classroom rests on the belief that a classroom doesn’t exist in a vacuum; the space around a room is just as important to learning as the room itself. If we design our classrooms to optimize student learning and collaboration, we can also create public spaces that extend the work of the classroom.
Our tiny house, like the Mosaic Initiative itself, dreams big, inviting us to rethink what a learning space looks like and where learning happens.
-Kelly Hanson
In October, the Fellows will be presenting their designs to the Architect’s office to engage with these ideas further. Our next Annual Design Symposium, will occur in late Spring 2019 and will be open to all Indiana University instructors. Let us know if you wish to join us!! Keep up with all the Mosaic Initiative is doing by following us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and of course, by subscribing to our blogs here.
As more and more classrooms at Indiana University have Solstice added to them, it is increasingly likely that the classroom you are teaching in will be equipped with this technology. And just because the technology is in your classroom, does not mean that you have to use it. However, if it allows you to do something you were never able to do before, or allows you to do something more efficiently than before… then it makes sense to use the technology. In other words, don’t search for ways to incorporate the technology just to use it. Use it because it makes the learning experience better for your students.
If you are worried about introducing new technologies in class because you’ll have to teach the students how to use the technology, please read on. With Solstice, it is best to ease your students into the technology with a low stakes introductory activity. At the start of the term, engage them in a quick activity that allows you and the students to start to get to know each other.
This can take on many different forms, but when I have Solstice in the room, it really allows me to meet students where they are… their pictures. I ask students to find an image that represents something about themselves, about something they enjoy, or about their recent term break (winter break, summer break, etc.) that they would like to share with the class. By leaving the terms a little more open, it allows students that want to share their favorite instagram photo to do so, or those that are a little more private to just search for a google image that represents a trip they took or something they are comfortable sharing.
I usually only give about a minute or two for students to find an image on their devices. I then briefly explain that Solstice is a wireless sharing technology that we will use often this term and that we are starting with this activity so that everyone can gain experience with how to connect, share, and manage sharing within this space.
Mosaic Fellows Kan Shao, Ann Bunger, and Minjeong Kim utilize solstice to share ideas about active learning.
By this point, several students will have already connected and shared without further instruction. I ask those students to help others around them, which frees me up to help those that need further instruction. I then like to take a couple of minutes to demonstrate some of the management features of Solstice and discuss classroom norms with the tool. Finally, students can verbally share what their image represents and why they chose that image with either the whole class or their small group, depending on class size.
From start to finish I find this activity takes about 15-20 minutes and is invaluable for setting up the culture of sharing with Solstice for the remainder of the term. If you are unsure if any of the classrooms you teach in have Solstice in them, check the IU Solstice list to see all the spaces it is available on your campus. If you are interested in more information about Solstice or interested in a one-on-one session to learn more, contact us mosaic@iu.edu. Are you already using Solstice in your class? Please share what works for you and your students in the comments below.
In this blog series, we’ll explore how Mosaic classrooms with configurable furniture can be arranged to support a variety of active learning activities. In this installment, we’ll take a look at different ways to configure GISB rooms 1100, 1106, 1112, 1118, 1122, 1128, 1134.
With seating for up to 64 students, the GISB classrooms’ moveable tables and chairs can, at first, present an overwhelming number of configuration possibilities. Today we’ll share five options for arranging the classrooms and suggestions for a smoother room arrangement process.
Arrangement #1: Presentation/Lecture with Paired Work Groups
Arranging the desks facing the screens allows for an instructor or student presenter(s), as well as the actual screens, to be clearly visible. By arranging students in groups of two, you can create paired work groups, for both short activities or longer assignments.
Arrangement #2: Presentation/Lecture with Long Rows
Lecture/Presentation/remote speaker:Moving the desks into five rows allows for all students to face the screen(s) for lecture, student presentations, or to view a remote guest speaker.
White boards and screens:The whiteboard walls and side screens remain accessible to both instructors and students. An instructor can display their slides on the screens for maximum visibility to all students. In this arrangement, instructors have access to whiteboards on the sides of the rooms to write explanations.
Interactive presentation: To engage students during a lecture or presentation, leverage Solstice to allow students to share content (images, videos, their screens) from their own devices. They can share to any of the screens in the room, including the screens at the front of the room.
Arrangement #3: Groups of Four
This configuration allows for up to sixteen groups of four, which is ideal for small group work. The arrangement provides each student group with a large collaborative workspace and allows them to make eye-contact with their peers as they collaborate. There is ample space to allow for the instructor, teaching assistants, and students to move about the classroom.
Arrangement #4: Eight Groups of Six
For a class that enrolls less 64 students, tables and chairs can be pushed to the side if they are not being used. To further clear space for student work, unused tables can hold student belongings.
This arrangement is useful for classroom meetings or table-focused group work. Ample space allows students and instructors to easily move about the room, and provides students access to all whiteboard surfaces. Also, four groups have access to the side screens.
Arrangement #5: Class Forum
Pictured: GISB GA 1118 (other rooms have one screen at the front)
This arrangement seats 32 students. Extra tables are pushed to the sides. In this configuration a large group can engage in a discussion with clear view of other participants.
Tips for configuring GISB classrooms
Reconfiguring a classroom in a short amount of time can be challenging. Here are a few helpful tips:
Communicate the desired configuration to your students. Consider sharing one of the above images with students (perhaps, on a slide before class or in your Canvas course) and ask your students to begin to arrange the classroom when they arrive.
Communicate expectations. Just as you expect students to prepare for class with readings or homework, let them know that you expect them to help prepare the learning environment for class meetings.
Expect it to take a few class meetings for the process to be smooth. It can take a few class meetings before students can quickly and smoothly arrange furniture to the desired configuration. As you plan for your class, be sure to consider the time required to configure the room.
The configurations we’ve discussed here are just a few examples of what’s possible in GISB rooms 1100, 1106, 1112, 1118, 1122, 1128, 1134. If you’d like to share your own ideas, please add them to the comments below. If you’ve taught in one of these GISB rooms before and want to share your own experiences in this room, contact us mosaic@iu.edu to write your own blog.
In this blog series, we’ll explore how Mosaic classrooms with configurable furniture can be arranged to support a variety of active learning activities. In this installment, we’ll take a look at different ways to configure GISB rooms 0005, 0007, 0009, 00011, 0013.
With seating for up to 24 students, the GISB’s wheeled tables and chairs can at first present an overwhelming number of configuration possibilities. Today we’ll share five options for arranging the classrooms and suggest a few ways to engage your students in small and large group work, as well as whole-class interaction.
Arrangement #1: Six Table Groups of Four
This configuration allows for six groups of four, which is ideal for small group work. The arrangement provides the student group with a large collaborative workspace and allows them to make eye-contact with their peers as they collaborate. Student groups also have access to white board walls for idea sharing and presentation.
Arrangement #2: Presentation with Sight-lines to Screens and White Boards
Lecture/Guest Speaker/Student Presentation Mode: Moving the desks into two groups of three rows facing one anther allows for an instructor or student presenter to engage the screen and whiteboards on both sides of the classroom. This configuration also makes it easier for students to see one another in a whole class discussion.
Lecture/Presentation/remote speaker: Moving the desks into three row allows for all students to face the two screens for lecture, student presentations, or to view a remote guest speaker. If instructors use the video conferencing camera (or EagleEye Director in GA0013), this configuration allows for the remote speaker to easily see and engage with the class.
Interactive presentation: To engage students during a lecture or presentation, leverage Solstice to allow students to share content (images, videos, their screens) from their own devices.
Lecture/Presentation/remote speaker: Moving the desks into two angled rows allows for all students to face the two screens for lecture, student presentations, or to view a remote guest speaker. If instructors use the video conferencing camera (or EagleEye Director in GA0013), this configuration allows for the remote speaker to easily see and engage with the class.
Interactive presentation: To engage students during a lecture or presentation, leverage Solstice to allow students to share content (images, videos, their screens) from their own devices.
The aisle in the middle created with this configuration allows for both students and instructors to easily move within the room.
Arrangement #5: Connected Group Tables – for a Smaller Enrolling Course
For a class that enrolls less than 24 students, unused tables and chairs can be pushed to the side to hold student belongings and create a less cluttered work area.
This arrangement is useful for classroom meetings when work will be focused at tables. The configuration also allows for easy movement around the tables and access to all whiteboard surfaces.
The configurations discussed here are just a few examples of what’s possible in GISB rooms 0005, 0007, 0009, 00011, 0013. If you’d like to share your own ideas, please add them in the comments below or contact us mosaic@iu.edu to write your own blog.
In the configurable classroom blog series, we’ll explore a few ways Mosaic classrooms with configurable furniture can be arranged to support a variety of active learning activities. In this first installment, we’ll take a look at different ways to configure AD 1000, located on the IUPUI campus.
With seating for up to 24 students, AD 1000’s wheeled tables and chairs can at first present an overwhelming number of configuration possibilities. Today we’ll share four options for arranging the classrooms and suggest a few ways to engage your students in small and large group work, as well as whole-class interaction.
Arrangement #1: Three Groups of Eight
Large Group Work: This configuration allows for three circles of eight, which is ideal for large group work. The arrangement provides each student with their own large desk space and to make eye-contact with their peers as they collaborate. Student groups also have access to their own glass board for brainstorming and presentation.
Smaller Group Work: You can easily create smaller groups of two or three within the table group by asking students to work with the person seated next to them. Students can even pull their wheeled-tables away from the circle to create a temporary, smaller group. Then, for a larger group discussion or project-work, students can move their individual tables back to re-make the larger circle.
Arrangement #2 : Six Groups of Four
This configuration allows for ample space between the tables to allow a member(s) of one group to engage other groups.
Arrangement #3: Eight Groups of Three
This room configuration allows for eight smaller student groups of three.
Arrangement #4: Whole-class Presentation
Lecture/Guest Speaker/Student Presentation Mode: Moving the desks into a curvy line allows for all students to face the interactive touch screen for lecture, student presentations, or to view a remote guest speaker. Leaving an aisle in the middle allows easier access to individual seats.
Interactive presentation: To engage students during a lecture or presentation, leverage Solstice to allow students to share content (images, videos, their screens) from their own devices.
The configurations we’ve discussed here are just a few examples of what’s possible in AD 1000. If you’d like to share your own ideas, please add them to the comments below. If you’ve taught in AD 1000 and want to share your own experiences in this room, contact us to write your own blog.
On our blog, we share multiple perspectives of those involved in the Mosaic Initiative. In previous posts, we have shared the voice of faculty, researchers, developers, and learning spaces designers. Today’s blog shares the student’s perspective of a Mosaic active learning classroom on the IU Bloomington campus.
Mary Clare Novak | Indiana University Bloomington Media School Junior
Mary Clare Novak is a junior at Indiana University Bloomington majoring in media advertising and public relations and minoring in marketing and Spanish. She calls Geneva, IL, a suburb about an hour west of Chicago, home and enjoys activities she can share with friends, family and strangers. Mary Clare shares that she loves the Media School at IU because of the wonderful people she is able to learn from and work with. After graduation, she plans to move to a new city and work for a public relations firm that works with a variety of clients.
As a Junior, Mary Clare has experienced many different learning spaces on the Bloomington campus. In her guest post today, she shares how her background has led her to the IU Media School and how the Mosaic active learning classrooms have impacted her learning experience while here.
My entire life has revolved around teamwork. Growing up as an athlete with three siblings, my day to day activities have always included tackling problems and reaching solutions with others.
“I’ll defend number 3 if you take number 25.”
“I’ll unload the dishwasher while you sweep the kitchen.”
Looking back on it, that must be why I abandoned the idea of becoming a high school English teacher, and launched my education in the direction of public relations. Forcing a group of students to read and interpret Hamlet might seem riveting for some, but not me. No, I want to be on the other side. The side that creates. The side that reaches people. The side that influences. And I want to do it with others.
So I went for it. I started my glorious and stress inducing trek into becoming the next woman that will be responsible for a bounce back after scandals and social media mishaps. After I got through all of the text book definitions of what the difference between an audience and a public is, the real work began. Although I feel safe and well provided for at Indiana University’s Media School, I have something to confess. Walking into my first 300 level Public Relations Writing course into a classroom full of my soon-to-be competitors and a professor who has traveled the world for 20 years as a conflict reporter was absolutely terrifying.
Little did I know, these people would become my new teammates in creating materials that I would later use to kick-off my career. I owe it to them, and the Mosaic classroom.
I’ve never been one that gets excited about technology. That might be due to my incompetence with it, or the fact that its constant advancements make me shiver. However, Franklin Hall Room 114 was too wonderful to scare me. It was almost… beautiful.
When I walked in on my first day, I recalled a time my friends and I took over that room to study for finals the previous semester. We used the massive screen in the front of the room to display motivational music videos. I wrote out accounting equations on one of the three white boards while my friends tinkered with connecting their laptops to one of the many available screens. I thought I was a pro at handling all of the room’s wonders, but I had so much more to learn!
Our class immediately dove into experimenting with the technology, and to my delight, we did it in groups! The “get to know you” portion of the class not only involved acquainting ourselves with our teams for the semester, but also the different aspects of the Mosaic classroom.
First, we had to move into our groups. The desks equipped with wheels made that almost effortless! As we conversed, we were asked to take notes on our desks. That’s right, ON our desks. As our professor started to kindly toss Expo markers at us, it all started making sense. Our desks were white boards, too!
Those realizations were enough to keep me full of excitement until we learned about Solstice. Solstice is basically Bluetooth for your computer screen. You use a code to connect your device to whichever monitor you are viewing, and sure enough it will display your screen. This was key for working in groups, because instead of huddling around one 13 inch MacBook Air, we could view our work on a mounted plasma screen.
As we piled up our finished press releases, public service announcements and feature stories, the grand finale grew nearer and nearer: the final presentation. Usually, presenting my work to an experienced marketer in a room full of eyes would make me a little nervous. But standing in front of that ginormous screen with my group that displayed my work made me feel like a real public relations practitioner.
Collaboration is rooted in many educational initiatives. As a believer in teamwork, I am always thrilled when I get to create with people who are equally enthusiastic about the work as I am. But working in Franklin Hall Room 114 is a game changer. You get a bonus teammate: the Mosaic classroom.
The IU Media School recently went through a renovation with the Learning Spaces team and opened their new spaces in the Fall of 2016. You can follow and connect with the Media School @IUMediaSchool on all of your favorite social medias. To learn more about the Mosaic Initiative, explore our website mosaic.iu.edu and subscribe to the Mosaic Blog today to ensure you aren’t missing any future posts.
What is active learning? Is there evidence that it works? How do I do it?
If you’re asking any of these questions, you might be interested in these six short readings (two research articles and four short blogs/articles) addressing active learning research or practice. Several readings provide evidence and arguments for why active learning leads to successful student outcomes while other readings on this list claim otherwise. These different, and at times, contradictory perspectives on active learning’s effectiveness and application make for a lively conversation if you read with a group of instructors.
Learning More about Active Learning
Key Quote: “Using active-learning strategies in the classroom may not be enough to improve learning; you have to know how to use them well.”
Active Learning Not Associated with Student Learning in a Random Sample of College Biology Courses
Key Quote: “Our study revealed that active learning was not associated with student learning in a broad population of introductory college biology courses…. Simply adding clicker questions or a class discussion to a lecture is unlikely to lead to large learning gains. Effectively using active learning requires skills, expertise, and classroom norms that are fundamentally different from those used in traditional lectures.”
PNAS | June 10, 2014 | vol. 111 | no. 23 (Article #4 in this list)
Whether you read these articles for your own reflection or you wish to create a reading group around them, you might find these notes for reading useful. As you read, consider the following:
How are the articles/blogs defining active learning?
Find and highlight or underline each author’s definition and then go back and compare them.
How do the different definitions square with your own?
Why are so many of the articles focused on STEM disciplines?
Additional prompts for conversation:
How do you design a successful active learning experience for your students?
What are the components of a successful active learning activity for your courses/discipline?
How do you know it worked?
If you decide to do a reading group with your department or a group of colleagues, please share your experience, ideas, and thoughts on twitter and tag us @MosaicIU or Instagram @Mosaic_IU. After the readings, if you’d like Mosaic staff to come talk with your group, help develop ideas, or have a consultation in a particular room, feel free to contact us at mosaic@iu.edu. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss out on any of our upcoming posts.
Using Solstice helped students facilitate an even more engaging discussion. For example, consider my “newtonian motion” small group discussion prompt; students were able to identify and hide duplicate images to narrow down the images that best supported the discussion topic. Without prompting them, students started making stacks of images that had the same “hidden” force and were able to categorize the images into three categories. Going through this process helped students identify the common “hidden” forces many students forget about when working problems within this unit.
If you are worried about introducing new technologies in class because you’ll have to teach the students how to use the technology, please read on. With Solstice, it is best to ease your students into the technology with a low stakes introductory activity. At the start of the term, engage them in a quick activity that allows you and the students to start to get to know each other. 
