Mell Classroom Building with Active Learning Spaces
Recently, some of us scheduled to teach in Auburn University's new Mell Classroom Building when it opens for Fall 2017 were taken on brief tours of the structure as it nears completion.
It's an exciting project from the active learning classrooms, to the lecture halls, to the student study spaces, and to the Panera's on the ground floor. The building is attached to the main entrance of the university library, effectively making them conjoined teaching spaces and making the Mell the new grand entrance. To that end, when one enters the building, one enters the large atrium with its natural lighting. As may be seen in the photo on the right, the open halls and tiers of classrooms surround the central atrium.
The new building is intended for use by all the University's departments, and the proximity to the library should encourage more thorough research and more interaction between teaching faculty, students, and library faculty. I, frankly, hope that a less physically constrictive space will induce more creativity and more positivity than the older classrooms do.
On both sides of the atrium, north and south, at each of the three levels are student study spaces just off the open hallways. The study spaces have glass walls, which will presumably filter sound as much as
admit light. In the photo to the left, two of the study spaces may be seen extending a bit into the open space of the atrium. The glass chosen for its walls may also be used as a dry-erase marker board for students to jot down ideas or work out equations. It appears that the open hallways and the classrooms will be carpeted, which should help control the noise of so many conversations, a reliable byproduct of active learning. There are other student study areas throughout the building, including carrels and a room for recording. The library's bookstore extension will also reopen in its old location near where the library meets the new building.
The new lecture halls will seat 160 students and will feature tiers of tables with movable chairs so that even large class sections can manage interactive, collaborative, and active work among the students. The smaller classrooms are even more carefully aligned with active learning design. Specifically they will feature pods of tables, movable chairs, ample floor space, and monitors on the wall for either the use of the instructor or for the students to use their mobile devices through sharing technology. One can see the recessed spaces on the wall in the classroom shown on the right. The monitors will be fitted into these spaces soon and then the dry-erase glass boards will circle the room, and those portions of glass board that will cover the recessed monitors will be clear, allowing the monitor to be seen and also to be written over. Even the smallest classrooms, which for now will have only one monitor installed, will have multiple recesses around their walls so that additional monitors may be installed in the near future.
I maintain that active learning is about technique, not technology, and yet it is immensely helpful when the technology facilitates the technique, and that's why buildings like this are so beneficial to student learning. I suspect demand to teach classes in this building will steadily increase, which I hope will encourage more classrooms of this caliber to be established at our university and elsewhere.
