6.2 Poorly Laid Out Teaching Plaza

The arrangement illustrated above is essentially four standard classrooms with the walls removed. This layout falls short in providing either the beneficial diversity of open plan teaching, or many of the educational benefits of open plan learning. This layout also has many acoustic limitations, as detailed below.

1 – Part of the corridor wall has been removed so students in the open plan space may be disturbed by movement in the corridor. Removing the corridor wall has no educational or design benefit and is therefore not recommended. A full height glazed partition would provide a visual connectivity, whilst providing adequate acoustic separation.

2 –The matrix of desks encourages non educational, disruptive communication to take place between tables, see section 6.6 for further details. With this table layout, teachers will need to project their voices to be heard by students at the back of the learning zone. Both of these factors will noticeably increase noise levels in this space, which will limit the performance, flexibility and overall user satisfaction of the space.

3 – Placing two dictatorial teaching spaces adjacent to each over will result in considerable levels of cross talk between teaching zones. Pupils will tend to be distracted by adjacent teaching activities. It is not recommended that dictatorial teaching spaces be placed adjacent to each other.

4 – The above plaza does not contain screens of any form, which results in an acoustically open space. Bookshelves, glazed screens, room corners and other elements could have been used to provide acoustic breaks. Failing to add screens will result in the propagation of the spoken voice and excessive noise spill from one zone to another. Both of these factors result in acoustic problems.

5 - The above space does not contain cellular areas for specifically noisy or quiet activities. This limits the potential educational diversity of this plaza. Open plan spaces are not normally suitable for either exclusively quiet learning or noisy activities, such as drama and multi media. It is therefore advised that a degree of cellular spaces are provided. The above plaza does not take specific measures to accommodate the acoustics of open plan teaching; hence the acoustic performance of this space is likely to be problematic. This conventional layout seems to be driven by the ease of converting back to an old, uninspiring four classroom layout. In summary, it is felt that a more inspiring functional space could be provided.