Emergent patterns of teaching/learning in electronic classrooms

Novel patterns of teaching/learning have emerged from faculty and students who use our three teaching/learning theaters at the University of Maryland, College Park. These fully-equipped electronic classrooms have been used by 74 faculty in 264 semester-long courses since the fall of 1991 with largely enthusiastic reception by both faculty and students. The designers of the teaching/learning theaters sought to provide a technologically rich environment and a support staff so that faculty could concentrate on changing the traditional lecture from its unidirectional information flow to a more collaborative activity. As faculty have evolved their personal styles in using the electronic classrooms, novel patterns of teaching/learning have emerged. In addition to enhanced lectures, we identified three common patterns: (a) active individual learning, (b) small-group collaborative learning, and (c) entire-class collaborative learning.