How Corrective Actions Impact Undergraduate
Teaching and Learning
Teaching and Learning
by Dr. Mikael Powell, NCARB, NCIDQ
Jamieson, Fisher,
Gilding, Taylor, and Trevitt (2000) wrote the following:
Space envelops the
user, including the impact of colour and texture, the acoustic and thermal
qualities, the way natural light enters the space, and how one area relates to another.
Each built space on the university
campus presents itself to teachers and students in these multiple ways. In turn, each of these ways will be
experienced variously by different individuals and, significantly, has the
capacity to affect the attitude and performance of any inhabitant. Decisions about any aspect of the design and
layout of a specific space…represent a particular viewpoint about how that
facility is to be experienced by the users.
(pp. 121–122)
Such
emphasis on context is appropriate, especially regarding classroom R4.
It is on the campus of one of the larger universities in this study and its
building dedication in 1938 was surely well- received. While the university awarded a commission for design
of the building through a national competition, the administration was unable
to start construction due to financial constraints.
However, when the university lost
its accreditation due to existing “cramped classrooms and inadequate
laboratory facilities” (Serenyi,
1998, p. 25), not surprisingly, it acquired the funds to construct the edifice,
which was the first one built on the new campus. The exterior was “characterized by Beaux-Arts
classicism: axial, symmetrical… reminiscent of Welles Bosworth’s Massachusetts
Institute of Technology campus of 1913” (Serenyi, 1998, p. 25), mentioned in Chapter
One. In similar fashion to MIT, the
interior was contemporary, utilitarian, and efficient.
On the day of the opening in 1938, the university president, (whose name
is withheld to maintain the institutional anonymity provided by the researcher
to participants) said, “The dedication of this building marks a
new era in the life of the University, an era in which what has been created
will be rendered permanent and enduring” (as cited in Serenyi, 1998, p. 25).
Except for a renovation in the
early 1990s, the building remains much the same. Classroom R4 is the largest in the building and has
tiered flooring (and a high ceiling to accommodate the rise of almost 36 inches
from the front to rear), and large, long windows on two sides. Each window has a long drab shade curled at
the edges due to the length. In 1938,
the windows were cited as “essential characteristics of the
façade…defined by alternating the vertical windows (voids) with vertical walls
(solids)” (Serenyi,
1998, p. 25), but now the windows and shades serve as a distraction,
scattering light through the room with the movement of air being blown in
through vents for heating or cooling purposes.
There
are seven continuous rows of 14 fixed hard wood pivoting-seats, with access from
flanking aisles, and two rows of nine seats at the rear with entrance provided at
one side.
All the walls are cement block, painted whitish-neutral, except the front, which was brownish to match the vintage wood doors. Filling much of the front wall is a large three-segmented, sliding green chalkboard with a 12 foot-wide projection screen pulled down to the chalk-rail. The browns, green, and off-whites of the classroom are reminiscent of the 20th century and blend with the patina of the putty and terracotta-colored flooring. The floor is polished, but it is unclear if it is clean. Along two of the windows are low radiators and the ceiling is a lay-in acoustical tile with air supply and return registers. The room is about 35 feet wide by 45 feet long. The fold down tablet arm is wedge-shaped and minimally sized. Remarkably, there are only two electrical outlets in the front of the room along either side of the chalkboard and one electrical outlet in the rear wall of the room (see Figure A4, in Appendix A for a floor plan illustration of the room layout). There is intermittent wireless Internet connectivity. The teacher and students enter the classroom through the door in the front. In the following narrative, I offer an interpretive excerpt of the classroom observation to illustrate the student survey responses, to provide indication of the pervasiveness of remedial responses performed, and to present a phenomenological exploration of the actions (see Figure 10 for illustrations of narrative excerpt and note that I obscured images for anonymity).
All the walls are cement block, painted whitish-neutral, except the front, which was brownish to match the vintage wood doors. Filling much of the front wall is a large three-segmented, sliding green chalkboard with a 12 foot-wide projection screen pulled down to the chalk-rail. The browns, green, and off-whites of the classroom are reminiscent of the 20th century and blend with the patina of the putty and terracotta-colored flooring. The floor is polished, but it is unclear if it is clean. Along two of the windows are low radiators and the ceiling is a lay-in acoustical tile with air supply and return registers. The room is about 35 feet wide by 45 feet long. The fold down tablet arm is wedge-shaped and minimally sized. Remarkably, there are only two electrical outlets in the front of the room along either side of the chalkboard and one electrical outlet in the rear wall of the room (see Figure A4, in Appendix A for a floor plan illustration of the room layout). There is intermittent wireless Internet connectivity. The teacher and students enter the classroom through the door in the front. In the following narrative, I offer an interpretive excerpt of the classroom observation to illustrate the student survey responses, to provide indication of the pervasiveness of remedial responses performed, and to present a phenomenological exploration of the actions (see Figure 10 for illustrations of narrative excerpt and note that I obscured images for anonymity).
At 2:51PM, it was warm
throughout classroom R4, but not
intolerable, for a brisk autumn day when the outside air was 53 degrees
Fahrenheit. Juan (pseudonyms are used
throughout) entered the auditorium and intently strolled to the seat at the end
of the fifth row from the front, adjacent to the windows. There, he was close enough to view activities
at the front of the room, and less likely to “fool around” (as he would later denounce)
because he knew that his efforts were important and if he concentrated on the
coursework, he would succeed (Juan, survey response, October 30, 2013). Therefore, Juan established his area: He took off his backpack and
placed it on the floor in the aisle next to his desk chair, then unzipped his
hooded jacket and draped it atop the backpack, repositioning the load until it
balanced without touching the smudgy flooring.
Juan reached into the backpack pocket, retrieved a spiral pad, and
placed it on the tablet arm of the empty desk chair adjacent to his. This secured space on either side of his desk
chair. In similar manner, Scott, Steve,
Paula, Farah, Cho Hee, and B’shara repeated that classroom ritual, whereby students maintained an
empty seat next to them for placement of their backpack contents, and garments
(and drinks to hydrate or sustain the occupants through the varying classroom
climate). Like Juan, B’shara did not
remove her laptop from her backpack, which was on the floor in front of an
empty seat beside her. Instead, she
perched languidly with her purse in her lap and a tablet and pen on the tiny desktop
surface, habitually twirling her hair.
When asked about her remedial actions, she complained that there was “no
space for laptops,” and that she “fall[s] behind in lecture while setting up.” Surprisingly, she reported that she expended
significant efforts trying to “accommodate writing and her computer at her seat”
(B’shara, survey responses, October 30, 2013). Most of her cohort agreed with those
sentiments, and all the students in class said that they performed some remedial
actions in class that day.
Soon, all the students were seated,
although two-thirds of the desks were empty.
After all had settled, the professor addressed the students to introduce
the first group presentation, and then he extinguished all overhead lighting. Madison retrieved the handouts for
distribution, while Farrah and Kaitlyn stood at the podium and projection
screen in the front, cueing the PowerPoint program. The tall window shades were pulled down,
nevertheless, light infiltrated along the sides of the window jamb and
windowsill, illuminating a large part of the screen, and rendering a great
swath of the projection illegible. Resigned,
Madison trudged up the ramp and through the aisles distributing packets of
supplementary information while her group members waited restlessly to start
the presentation. She methodically began
in the front row, then proceeded up the side aisle by the windows, and sidled
across each row to distribute the papers to students, before heading back to
the podium. Xavier, having no space convenient
to place his handout, took the papers, loosely crossed his leg, and then
balanced the packet on his knee.
Kaitlyn
began the class presentation without commenting on the screen projection
quality, although she knew that it was “difficult to see the screen with the
bad lighting” (Kaitlyn, survey response, October 30, 2013). Other students subsequently remarked
that they had to view the presentation online after class. However, those who did attempt to follow
along relayed that they were always leaning forward to see or hear. Olivia shifted forward, crossed her arms,
rested her chin on her fist, and bent toward the podium. At the end of class, Olivia acknowledged that
she had to lean in to see. When questioned
three weeks later, she acquiesced, “The classroom is older so [you] cannot see
the projector screen” (Olivia, survey response, November 20, 2013). Likewise, Ikuya rocked back and forth,
eventually settling against the seat back in front of him. He said, “When I try to learn during class by
leaning forward I could remember more material” (survey response, October 30,
2013). Throughout the presentation, Noah
awkwardly shifted back and forth, with one elbow on the little writing surface
and the other on the empty armrest adjacent to him, hands clasped, alternating
between resting his chin on his knuckles, or in the palm of his left hand.
Around 3:00 PM, it quickly became noticeably
hotter at the right front side of the classroom. Adam, who was sitting less than three feet
from an overhead heat supply duct, automatically took off his sweater, folded
it, put it on his lap, and then unbuttoned his sleeves and rolled them up to
his elbows. Within minutes, the air was
even hotter at the rear of the room, but remained more comfortable by the
windows. Nonetheless, Quentin, who sat
adjacent to the windows, took out his handout and for the next two minutes,
fanned himself and then Madison sitting next to him. Later, neither of them remarked about room
temperature when asked about deficiencies in the classroom. However, Whitney was exasperated. She said that she “was drinking coffee to
warm up and then took off [her] scarf because it was too hot” ( survey
response, October 30, 2013).
At 3:17 PM, the student presentation ended, and the professor turned on the overhead lights, walked to the front of the room, stood centered on the projection screen, and addressed the class. Somewhat reluctantly, he reiterated students’ problems with intermittent wireless Internet in the room and suggested that students groups use their “smart phones.” The professor was resigned to the fact that he would have to continue to utilize the classroom amid growing efforts to mitigate problems. He walked from side to side as he spoke and directed comments to the back of the room to keep students engaged in the meagerly occupied lecture room. “Being able to work with the room I guess is part of the skill of being an educator,” he would say later (interview, November 25, 2013). However, this class today was an important test, because he knew for the remainder of the course, group work is required during each class session. At the beginning of the semester, he tried to move the course to another classroom and he had shared information about those unsuccessful efforts with his students. Therefore, now he was anxious to see how effective group work could be accomplished here. He announced that the students should meet with their project teammates and that he would visit each group.
At 3:17 PM, the student presentation ended, and the professor turned on the overhead lights, walked to the front of the room, stood centered on the projection screen, and addressed the class. Somewhat reluctantly, he reiterated students’ problems with intermittent wireless Internet in the room and suggested that students groups use their “smart phones.” The professor was resigned to the fact that he would have to continue to utilize the classroom amid growing efforts to mitigate problems. He walked from side to side as he spoke and directed comments to the back of the room to keep students engaged in the meagerly occupied lecture room. “Being able to work with the room I guess is part of the skill of being an educator,” he would say later (interview, November 25, 2013). However, this class today was an important test, because he knew for the remainder of the course, group work is required during each class session. At the beginning of the semester, he tried to move the course to another classroom and he had shared information about those unsuccessful efforts with his students. Therefore, now he was anxious to see how effective group work could be accomplished here. He announced that the students should meet with their project teammates and that he would visit each group.
Several students took
all of their belongings and moved to another group location in the
classroom. After gathering his backpack,
Ian routinely climbed over a row of fixed chairs to reach the destination where
his group met. Similarly, Ethan and
Tanner scaled chairs in another area of the room. Whitney, Ying, Farrah, Emily, and Claire
became a group, with the two former students sitting in front of the latter
three to converse. Annoyed, Whitney
twisted around to relate to her peers behind her and turned forward to use her
laptop, while Ying mostly attended to her laptop in front of her. At the end of class, Ying responded that she
had undertaken “important efforts” to form groups (survey response, October 30,
2013). Most of her classmates
agreed. At the end of class, Emily
reported that the “chairs [were] uncomfortable and [made] it difficult to meet
in groups” and that it was “hard to pay attention when you’re not comfortable” (Emily,
survey responses, October 30, 2013). Instead
of trying to talk while sitting, Wu, Ikuya, and Tanner decided to relate to
their group while standing in the aisle.
Adam stayed where he
was, and B’shara moved over to sit next to him.
Cho Hee brought her possessions and sat along the front row with her
group members. Dao sat behind them to
complete the group. Adam and B’shara
conferred and used their cell phones to access the Internet instead of trying
to do so with their laptops as the course syllabus had directed. Dao leaned forward in his seat to relate to
them. Cho Hee was bending their way
also, leaning over her book bag and backpack at the floor between her and the
adjacent group member. B’shara wrote in
the notebook on her lap, then B’shara, Cho Hee, and Dao looked at the laptop on
Cho Hee’s desktop while Adam looked on.
The Professor first met
with Wu, Ikuya, Tanner, Bradley, and Rick in the back of the room. He sat down in a row and some members of the
group stood in the aisle or sat in the row in front of him, with their heads
turned back to the Professor as he addressed and interacted with the students. While he was with them, they seemed wholly
engaged in the interaction. Confidently,
he shouted reminders about group project requirements to the entire class, as
he rose and sauntered to the group in the front of the room. There, he crouched
on the floor facing Adam, B’Shara, Cho Hee and Dao, seated in their desks. The Professor’s interactions with each cohort
gathering in the room seemed effective.
But, after he left the group, Adam began to attend to his cell phone, only
occasionally glancing toward the rest of his group as they talked. However, nobody prompted Adam to engage
further with the group. Adam did not
think that the actions he took that day to make-up for shortcomings in the classroom
environment were very important, or that he had much power over how well he did
in the course, anyway. “Students are
just tired and can’t pay full attention for that long,” he would say. When asked later about the corrective
measures that he performed, Adam remarked, “I am not aware of what I do; why
are you trying to make me feel self-conscious?”(Adam, survey responses, October
30, 2013).
This research
revealed three key themes, illuminated experiences of performing corrective
actions and, identified how those attempted remedies affected teaching and
learning. I found that a student’s
expression of control over their learning experience influenced how he or she rated the importance of making corrective
measures. I noted the value that students
placed upon maintaining attention in their learning regimen and, I outlined how
teachers addressed adaptation within the teaching experience. In addition, I analyzed participant data to
give substance to the phenomena of remedial responses. In the following sections, I present
my findings supported with student and teacher data, and provide summary remarks.
