How to Improve Collaboration & Increase Student Engagement with Your Classroom Furniture
As an educator, you are constantly thinking about how to increase student engagement and collaboration, and it turns out that the school furniture you choose for your classrooms can have a substantial impact on both. In fact, Steelcase Education has conducted a variety of studies, each of which proves that classrooms designed for active learning have a significant effect on student engagement.
In the Steelcase Education classroom design studies, more collaborative school furniture was implemented to create innovative classroom designs that encouraged collaboration and engagement. As a result of implementing these design changes, test scores rose for both students and faculty, and the majority of participants reported higher engagement, increased motivation, higher grade expectations and improved creativity.
By updating the layout, design, and school furniture in your classroom, you can get your students more involved in their education, which results in more eager, collaborative and engaged learning.
Choose Flexible Furniture
Choosing innovative desks, chairs and other classroom furnishings is vital to the process, as these newer pieces tend to be more adaptable and can be used in a wide variety of settings and scenarios. Taking note from their own vast research, Steelcase has designed several modern and stylish classroom desks, tables, seating and more that are perfect for increasing classroom engagement. One of our favorites, the Verb line, was specifically developed to accommodate a wide variety of learning styles, methods and practices. The unique shapes are designed to promote interaction, while the high-quality, durable wheels allow students to quickly and easily rearrange their desks to better engage in nearly any educational activity.
Enable Quick Shifts in Focus and Attention
For any collaborative learning environment to be a success, all students must be able to quickly shift the focus of their attention from educational materials to educators, other students and more. A popular school furniture option that can easily improve attention and focus flexibility is the Steelcase Node series. Node is mobility and flexibility at its finest. Specially designed for easy transitions, Node makes non-traditional classrooms work by enabling educators to quickly rearrange the classroom to accommodate any exercise. The swivel seats allow students to easily shift focus to any area in the classroom, while their materials stay close-at-hand on the tandem personal surface attachment.
Ensure Learning Materials are Easily Accessible
It is equally important for students to have easy access to all of the educational materials they need for group collaboration, regardless of whether these materials are available in a printed or digital format. For computer science labs and other tech-savvy classrooms that require constant collaboration, we also highly recommend media:scape by Steelcase. This school furniture line features integrated technology designed for increased collaboration and productivity. Students can wirelessly share content with others in the space, and by improving student access to both analog and digital information, everyone is encouraged to join the collaborative process.
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