Sitting in Rows or in a Circle?

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Li Feng

UMassOnline China Coordinator Li Feng If I ask you to describe a typical classroom, what image comes to your mind? Is it a room with a podium and a blackboard/whiteboard in the front and rows of desks and chairs facing the podium? What do you think if I say a classroom can be a room with desks/chairs in a circle with a blackboard/whiteboard on the side? Can you picture yourself sitting in a classroom like this, raising questions and discussing questions with your classmates and your teacher? Or do you think it’s more like a conference room than a classroom?

Well, in many American universities, classrooms are arranged in this way. Of course, the big lecture halls that can fit hundreds of students look very similar to a lecture hall in a Chinese university. However, many of the classes that college students take have a size of 20 to 25 students. These classes tend to be taught while students and the teacher sit in a circle, having discussions together. When you sit in a circle, you can see all of your fellow students, not only your teacher. The role of the teacher is more of a facilitator of the learning process than a knowledge transmitter. You, as a student, think and learn through interactions with your fellow students and the teacher. You are expected to be an active part of the learning process to construct your own understanding and knowledge, rather than a passive receptacle of whatever is being lectured. Do you like this learning mode? Or would you rather prefer to be lectured to?

Transferring this learning mode into online learning, we see a similar relationship between the teacher and the students. Online instructors facilitate the learning activities whereas the students are the main bodies that carry out the learning tasks either independently or in groups. When everybody meets online real time in virtual classrooms, they do not “sit in rows” listening to the teacher lecture; rather, they “sit in a circle,” like in a face-to-face class, sharing experiences and discussing questions with each other. Can you imagine yourself learning in this way? Do you think it will be an effective learning mode for you? I’m interested in reading your thoughts and comments about it.

Comments

2 Responses to “Sitting in Rows or in a Circle?”

Apostolos K. on August 18th, 2009 10:06 am

I tend to think of my undergraduate (face to face) education as “Rows” and my graduate education (face to face, mostly) as “Circles”.

The nice thing about online education is that it’s really all-circles-all-the-time so you get to learn not just from the professor, but from the life experiences of your fellow classmates. The circles (online or face to face) are really great for learning. I can never go back to the Rows paradigm
Li Feng on August 21st, 2009 1:19 pm

Thank you for your insightful response! I can’t agree with you more! Nowadays physical classroom designs and virtual tools in online classrooms make it much easier for students to interact and learn from each other. In many physical classrooms, not only do students sit in circles, but the desks and chairs are mobile so that students can easily form small groups. In addition, in some classrooms, there are whiteboards on all four walls, on which each small group can present their work to the whole class. Similarly, learning management systems of online classes often have group management tools which make it very convenient for the students to break into small groups.