Moveable Chairs & Tables
Use this Feature to Support Active and Engaged Learning
- Match the attention focus to the activity: Rows focus students’ attention on a single presenter; a U-shape focuses students’ attention on the whole group for discussion; smaller pods or tables focus students’ attention on a team or partner for active learning or projects. If you brief students on your favorite room arrangements early in the term, you can ask them to quickly help you set the stage for the learning you plan to have happen.
- Get students up and moving: Clear the furniture away to the sides of the room to create an open space in the middle of the room for an icebreaker activity, a scavenger hunt, or a role-play–or move furniture to the middle of the room to allow students or teams more room at the whiteboards.
- Move between collaborative and individual workstations: Pushing tables or desks together facilitates partner and/or group work for activities like peer review, collaborative problem solving, small-group peer teaching, jigsaw reading and reporting out activities, group testing, or working with manipulatives (like Legos). Remember, group sizes and table configurations can be rearranged even within a class session if a subsequent activity calls for individual workspace for assessment activities or individual reflection or work.
- For more teaching tips and examples, visit the Stearns Center’s Active Learning page.
Engaged Learning
We encourage you to take advantage of classroom features to enhance teaching and engaged learning. Please scroll down for instructions on how to use these features.
If you want to... | Consider active learning activities such as... | Use low technology options like... |
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Check understanding | Having students use a piece of their own paper. Supplying an index card for responses. |
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Encourage group discussion | Having students work with other students in the same row or on either side of them. | |
Model problem solving | Having students work on a shared document that is then projected. | |
Engage in interactive lecture | Having students work on a shared document that is then projected. Supplying an index card for responses. |
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Co-create learning experience in the classroom | Having students work with other students in the same row or on either side of them. Having students undertake peer review in Blackboard or Padlet. |
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Encourage peer instruction | Having students create digital presentations outside of class that are then projected. | |
Show real world application | Having students use class time to work on a solution to the problem and give progress reports. |


