Here’s a scenario: You’re training in a new location. You enter the training room for the first time and wince: The seating arrangement is “auditorium” style, and worse yet, all the tables and chairs are bolted to the floor. 

This scenario was described by a friend of mine over lunch the other day. She’s teaching a class at a major university, and was excited to learn she’d be in a brand new classroom.  But seeing bolted-down furniture in a brand new classroom was disheartening. 

This is, after all, 2008, and research on classroom configurations and learning shows that different seating arrangements are appropriate for different types of learning. You’d think a major university would be on top of this.

Heck, this research was available ten years ago!

Kit Gerken, Associate Professor in the College of Education at the University of Iowa, has done a lot of work in this area. On her website she writes:

“There’s no one right, all-purpose way to arrange students, and depending on what they are trying to accomplish, teachers often use different seating arrangements during any one day.”

If you train, I encourage you to read up on what kind seating arrangements are most effective for the kind of teaching / training you do.

Bolted-down furniture is horrid for almost all interactive learning, but for some reason, this dinosaur just won’t die.

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Filed in Work, Training, Workplace, Train the Trainer