FURNISHING FOR THE FUTURE – TEACHER EXPERIENCES OF ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOMS

Despite the rapid technological development most classrooms looks the same as they did one hundred years ago. In the 21st century education has become technology enhanced and blended in various ways. In blended synchronous learning on-campus students participate in the same teaching and learning sessions as distance students with the idea of active and collaborative learning. The aim of this study is to evaluate and discuss how active learning classrooms best should be designed and equipped to support blended synchronous learning.

The overall research strategy has been a case study approach with two active learning classrooms as the cases. Nine teachers with experiences from the two active learning classrooms have been interviewed. Questions were based on a question scheme constructed at the Office of information technology at the University of Minnesota. Answers to the semi-structured interviews have been thematically analysed with the qualitative data analysis tool Atlas.ti.

Results from the analysis show that furnishing is a crucial issue and that there are several reasons to carefully consider how active learning classrooms should be designed and equipped. Teachers had different ideas on how the classrooms should best be furnished to support active group learning, but they were in general surprisingly satisfied with the technology and the technical support. Except for minor hardware problems in the inception phase the reported technical problems have mainly been software based. Some informants had not been able to always book the classrooms and recommended further investment in the construction of more active learning spaces.