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Lathrop 282
Description
Photographic Room Setup |
Schematic Room Setup |
Lathrop 282 is a large-scale flex
classroom with several tools to support both lecture and small group work.
There are eight large displays arrayed around the room; these displays have a
variety of inputs that can be applied to all, or to alternate displays, or
individually. There's also an annotation tablet that is a lot more effective
than a whiteboard for in-class notation (imagine sharing your slides and
digital notes on alternating screens). There are also 8 mobile collaboration
stations and 8 whiteboards distributed around the room.
But the real star of the space is its
synthetic acoustic environment: a fancy way of saying that the sounds of
conversation work differently in this space. You can address the whole class in
a normal tone of voice: no lavalier microphone or other gear required. As
important, everyone can hear any small questions from the class and where they
came from.
When working in small groups, that
acoustic trick can be turned inside out, so it's easy for teams to hear what's
going on at their table, while even conversations at nearby tables are
"blurred", making it much easier to focus on the task at hand.
All university classrooms are shared
resources that support many different classes each day. A critical social /
sustainability practice that supports this is to have the room reset to its
start state after each class. Use it in any configuration you wish, then
return it to the base configuration so the next group has the same freedom to
choose their experience without having to climb over and rearrange your setup.
The base configuration is illustrated on multiple small signs in the
classroom.
We do not expect faculty to do
the furniture moving: each student can return the furniture they used in
seconds, facilitating their rush to their next class.
Robert Emery
Smith
Director of Classroom Innovation
LTS
450 Jane Stanford
Way
Bldg 160-225
Stanford, CA 94305
650/206-9255
cell
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