Design Failure
Dec. 12th, 2011 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowToday I gave the final for my calculus class. Owing to a scheduling snafu, it was held in a different room from the one the class was held in - a room I'd never been in before.
At the beginning of this term, the university introduced new desks for the students. They're pretty nice desks; symmetric, so they can be entered from either side, and they're comfortable writing platforms for righties and lefties alike. The desktop is large enough to comfortably hold a laptop, as well. However, they're somewhat larger than the old desks, and, in order to keep the same capacity for students, they had to be, um, crammed in a bit.
Item: The aisles between the desks are narrower than they used to be, and if a student has moved his/her desk even a small amount, they are narrower still.
Item: There is no place to put a backpack directly under the desk, and so students must put them to one side or the other, protruding into those so-narrow aisles.
Item: There is only one useful door to the room. (There is another visible, but it appears to lead into another room rather than the hallway.) The front desk is at the other end, and so, on entering, the teacher has to maneuver down those aisles; and if, as happened today, a fair number of students are already present, so much the worse.
Item: The door is up against the right side of the room. There are two obvious aisles to follow, to reach the front desk. If you take the right-hand aisle, all is (more or less) well. If you take, as I did, the next aisle to the left, you will notice (halfway down) that the frontmost student desks flanking that aisle butt up against the front desk. In that case, it is necessary to clamber over one desk or another to proceed.
Item: The front wall of the room is narrower than those on the left and right. On it are a small chalkboard, and next to it a whiteboard of the same size. Neither would be adequate for lecturing; you'd have to erase everything at too-brief intervals. There are longer chalkboards on the left wall, but they are inaccessible, due to the student desks.
Item: Halfway up the right wall there is a rectangular protrusion, a column of sorts, and the clock is hung on that protrusion. Since the teacher's desk is also on the right side, the clock is hard to see from that position. Students in the two rightmost files also will have difficulty with it, as will all the students in the front half of the room.
My sister O has a degree in interior design. I found myself devoutly wishing the university had consulted her, or someone like her. Terrible room!
At the beginning of this term, the university introduced new desks for the students. They're pretty nice desks; symmetric, so they can be entered from either side, and they're comfortable writing platforms for righties and lefties alike. The desktop is large enough to comfortably hold a laptop, as well. However, they're somewhat larger than the old desks, and, in order to keep the same capacity for students, they had to be, um, crammed in a bit.
Item: The aisles between the desks are narrower than they used to be, and if a student has moved his/her desk even a small amount, they are narrower still.
Item: There is no place to put a backpack directly under the desk, and so students must put them to one side or the other, protruding into those so-narrow aisles.
Item: There is only one useful door to the room. (There is another visible, but it appears to lead into another room rather than the hallway.) The front desk is at the other end, and so, on entering, the teacher has to maneuver down those aisles; and if, as happened today, a fair number of students are already present, so much the worse.
Item: The door is up against the right side of the room. There are two obvious aisles to follow, to reach the front desk. If you take the right-hand aisle, all is (more or less) well. If you take, as I did, the next aisle to the left, you will notice (halfway down) that the frontmost student desks flanking that aisle butt up against the front desk. In that case, it is necessary to clamber over one desk or another to proceed.
Item: The front wall of the room is narrower than those on the left and right. On it are a small chalkboard, and next to it a whiteboard of the same size. Neither would be adequate for lecturing; you'd have to erase everything at too-brief intervals. There are longer chalkboards on the left wall, but they are inaccessible, due to the student desks.
Item: Halfway up the right wall there is a rectangular protrusion, a column of sorts, and the clock is hung on that protrusion. Since the teacher's desk is also on the right side, the clock is hard to see from that position. Students in the two rightmost files also will have difficulty with it, as will all the students in the front half of the room.
My sister O has a degree in interior design. I found myself devoutly wishing the university had consulted her, or someone like her. Terrible room!
