A different classroom

SOC foundation students ulitising the whiteboard near their desk.

Imagine the looks of a typical classroom, having plain coloured walls, with rows of tables and chairs facing the white board of the class, along with a table for the lecturer at the side and a few metres away from the white-board along with the projector screen.

Now imagine a room, with its walls painted with a slightly dark green colour to it but designed with plain patterns on it. With five hexagon tables, arranged in a diagonal manner, to form the X of the classroom, give it space so that students can walk in-between the tables.

Along with a couple of wheel-chairs surrounding the tables. Then have an LCD screen and a whiteboard placed on the walls next to each hexagon table. Lastly, the Lecturer’s table which looks slightly like a podium at the side and in front of the whiteboard and projector screen.

That second room described is how a typical X-space room looks like in Taylor’s University (TU).

“The purpose of the X-space room is to practice collaborative learning, whereby students bring their own devices and do their tutorials in class,” said Catherine Lee Cheng Kiat, a Programme Director under the School of Communication (SOC).

She explained that the usage of the LCD screen and whiteboard, gives students the ability to work together with a flow. So, instead of relying on one person to write down the notes and pass the note around everyone to have a look at it. The whiteboard and LCD screen can be used to share the note at a spot where everyone can see it with ease.

So far, only two online sites are used for conducting her tutorial. One, Socrative, a smart student response system site that give teachers the ability engage with their students through a series of educational exercises, quizzes and games in an instant.

The second one is padlet, which is like a virtual bulletin board where anyone can put almost any content there like videos, pictures, text, documents and more, on that page.

Both sites will require a smartphone, tablet or laptop to access them.

“Most of the time, I ask my students to mark their attendance in a ‘room’ I created in Socrative and when the tutorial begin, then the students have to discuss their work together in groups and once their work is done, they submit it by posting it up on padlet, so that they can review it later.” She added.

Cheryl Soo, 18, a SOC student, mentioned that this X-Space class was very new to her because she was so used to the linear approach from how her lectures are conducted and how her classes before tertiary education was done.

“Before X-Space, when I was in a public school, the way how the classes were conducted was very spoon-fed, instead of letting us learn up the knowledge on our own, they gave it to us on the spot.

“So when I was first exposed to the X-Space room, I was a bit nervous because on the arrangements of the tables, because in a usual classroom setting, we have the opportunity to sit wherever we want but in this room, you have to sit together with people you do not know yet. At least when time flew, I am now at ease with the group.

“The X-Space room is somewhat like a lecture but more hands-on; the interesting part about what I have noticed about the room is that, everything here has a function,“ she said.

Cheryl added that she has become more independent on herself and she has more confidence in her presentation skills than before after her tutorial sessions in the X-Space rooms.

18-year-old Candice Chan, also a SOC student said that the X-Space room reminded her of the classroom she was in during her days in an international school.

“The setting of the classroom I was in, it had a similar setting like how the tables were arranged in X-space. We were also taught to work together. So the X-Space room felt like ‘home’ because I was trained to be used to this environment.

“There is a reason why the room looks as it is, do you know that there is a reason why the classroom is so colourful?

“The green colour on the wall represents life and naturality, it helps somewhat from making us feel bored, while the bright yellow on the chairs, represents energy,” she added.

One thing Candice liked about her tutorials in X-Space is that she gets work done on the spot. Unlike lectures, whereby work is done later.

Catherine mentioned that only Foundation students and some Diploma students are using the X-Space rooms for their tutorials. Eventually, more Diplomas and future Degree programmes will be using the X-Space room by 2015.

Catherine also added that TU plans to renovate all classrooms except lecture theaters into X-Space rooms by 2016.