Most students are familiar with seeing certain buildings on their class schedules: the Lender School of Business, Tator Hall and College of Arts and Sciences. But now, students can add the Arnold Bernhard Library to that list.
Room 218 in the library has been converted into a classroom, moving all the computers into the Cyber Café. Now, the room that was once open for group study sessions or personal research, will be closed Monday-Friday from 8 a.m.-9:10 p.m.
“The way the room is designed is geared to having clusters of students around the round tables as opposed to a traditional classroom with rows of desks,” said Kevin Cross, sophomore political science major who has international political economy in ABL 218.
Sean Duffy, associate professor of political science, explained the classroom is set up in “pod” style, but he’s more than willing to change his teaching style to adapt to the new learning environment.
“The way students are arranged in pods makes it both more difficult to hold discussions as an entire class, and easier to have smaller group discussions – so I am changing a bit to take advantage of that,” Duffy said.
Cross said he was surprised to see ABL 218 as his classroom on his schedule this semester. “I was unaware that there were classrooms in the library,” he said.
While it may be odd for some to have a class in the library, students and professors have not complained about the change of setting, but there are some significant challenges to teaching in the library classroom.
“The acoustics in the room are strange – I can’t hear students in all sections of the room from the front, and I get the feeling that students on one side of the room cannot hear students on the other side of the room,” Duffy said.
But all challenges aside, Duffy explained there are both pros and cons to the room.
"I have already observed a much higher degree of interaction among students (at each station), which may be facilitated by the classroom, or may be because many of them already know each other. Some have already commented that they don’t like the way it breaks up the class – for me, it almost feels like teaching to people in six different rooms simultaneously,” Duffy said. “This is a great class of students and I’m so excited about the course and working with them, that I could do that in almost any environment!”
The reason for the new classroom may be due to the increase in student enrollment; however there are many speculated reasons for the classroom conversion.
“I suspect it’s because a number of classrooms were eliminated with the construction to convert Echlin into the new Admissions office,” Duffy said.
Larger Student Body Creates Need for More Classrooms
Published: Sunday, February 7, 2010
Updated: Sunday, February 7, 2010
 "Photo: Photo courtesy of Google Images")
Photo courtesy of Google Images
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