It’s just one of nearly 300 classrooms on the five campuses of HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, but it’s had an outsized impact at the institution.
Their active learning classroom has been so effective at boosting student engagement, participation and collaboration, and become such a popular teaching space for faculty, that the college is now considering “how we can thoroughly convert, over time, our inventory of traditional classrooms into a mix of different kinds of active learning spaces,” says Michael Corradino, dean of academic affairs at HACC’s Lancaster Campus.
The 851-square-foot active learning space, created with mobile Steelcase Education furniture and tools, has changed how teachers teach and how students learn.
“Boy, do they talk about the difference. As teachers and as students, once they get into that room and have that mobility, it’s really a shock and a bit of a disappointment for them to have to go back to an old-fashioned room,” says Corradino.
“I’ve heard, almost to a person, how they wish they had all their classes in the active learning room.”
MATH 103 — COLLEGE ALGEBRA
HACC uses the active learning classroom for a variety of courses, including English, speech, business, education, and radiologic technology. College algebra is taught by Susan Cooper-Nguyen, a full-time HACC faculty member and a teacher for nearly 20 years.
She describes her typical student as “non-traditional, a 27-year-old female with two kids, coming back for a change of careers, with a lot of anxiety and fear about college.
“The active learning classroom isn’t as rigid as a traditional room, it’s open and colorful and mobile, and that helps take away some of that fear and anxiety right from the start.”