Transforming the University Classroom from a Liminal Space to a Place for Learning
By: Brennan Conaway
Winter break is over; spring is in the air, and for those of us teaching in the Japanese school system, the academic year is just beginning. Everyone—both students and teachers—wants to “start off on the right foot,” as if we have an intuitive understanding of the Butterfly Effect, that final outcomes are heavily dependent on initial conditions. I believe they are. With the goal of helping my students succeed and, to be honest, making my job a little easier, I begin with a few policies and practices on Day One of the first semester.
I do these things because of a perception of spatial aesthetics, which comes from my art practice and my experience as an architectural designer. As an artist/designer, I have rebuilt a camper as the Nowhere mobile art gallery, installed large sculptures in public spaces, and transformed the white cubes of gallery spaces with interactive artworks. One of the biggest takeaways from my experience as an artist/designer is that everything and anything can be altered and made anew.
The typical university classroom in Japan is somewhere on an architectural spectrum between prison cafeteria and airport boarding gate. The furniture is hard, uncomfortable, and often bolted to the floor, immovable. The floor is linoleum tile or industrial carpet. Windows are large, but closed, and expected to stay that way. There’s nothing on the walls. The color palette is so forgettable that I cannot remember it, but I think it’s off-white, near-grey, and maybe a vague blue.
I regard these classrooms as liminal spaces. Liminal spaces are those empty, unpopulated zones that we pass through on the way to someplace else. As an artist, I’m fascinated by them, but these spaces are bland, cold, and inhuman. As a teacher, my goal is to redesign the classroom with small changes, which I believe transform it from a liminal space into a specific place for myself and my students. I was aware of conceptualizations about the difference between spaces and places when I first started making these little changes to my classroom, but I was following artistic intuition (“Something doesn’t feel right”) rather than conceptual insight. The transformation is not dramatic, but I think it’s helpful.
Here are some of the things I do:
Open the Windows
When I arrive at my classroom, it’s invariably stuffy and usually hot, ideal conditions for my students to snuggle into their desks and go to sleep, so I open some windows. In mild weather, I open them wide. In winter, I open them a crack, just to get some airflow and re-oxygenate the classroom atmosphere. Depending on sunlight conditions, I also open the blinds (or curtains) to bring in some vitamin D. The goal is to fill the classroom with fresh air and sunlight, causing a subtle improvement to everyone’s mood.
Remove the Lectern
In every Japanese university classroom where I have taught, a high desk or lectern has been front and center, lording over the lowly student seating. When I first encountered it, I had a gut reaction to this piece of furniture, which elevates the teacher and creates a wall between them and the students, so I’ve never used it. I want to be closer to my students, on their level, and not separated from them. There are pedagogical theories about being an approachable teacher (link). In my classroom, I move the high desk to the corner of the room, spread out all my stuff on the first row of student desks, and drop the teacher’s chair down to a normal level.
With my notebooks, attendance sheets, pens, water bottle, and laptop cords all over the place, I’m in the classroom, not above it. I’m physically closer to students, especially those in the first few rows, and at their eye level when I’m sitting down, so spontaneous interactions and conversations can occur before and after class. The students do not need to approach me; I am already there.
Always Use the Projector
My students are digital natives, so they are used to seeing words with images. They expect a multimodal communication style. They are children of the screen, so I use the overhead projector and the screen, always. My laptop is plugged into an electrical outlet, hardwired to a phone line or wifi connection, and feeding the HDMI cable to the overhead projector.
Visual stimuli (art) and text activate different, and complementary, parts of the brain. I want to provide my students with art and visual information to complement the textual or aural inputs, so they can be whole-minded learners, and because the walls of the university classroom are blank, my projector is always running: homework schedules, assignments, illustrations of topics, news feeds, search results, anything to further engage students, and add color to the bland liminal space.
I still sometimes use the white- or blackboard, but, more and more often, I’m writing words or phrases on an open document and projecting it on the screen. I also try to include an illustration (photo, painting, or drawing) as part of the prompt for classroom discussions or homework assignments. If we are talking or writing about the topic “Things to take to a desert island” for example, the projector screen shows a tropical island alongside the written prompt. A student mentions a fascinating place or unique vocabulary term, and a quick image search literally illustrates what they are talking about. Multimodal communication is essential, especially within these cold classroom spaces.
Sit in an H
In my previous classes, a snowdrift of students accumulated in the corner near the rear door, where people piled up, one behind the other, in an anonymous mass. As they were far from my encampment at the front of the room, it was difficult to see their faces or hear their quiet responses to my questions.
I believe in learner autonomy, and my students are free to choose the books they read and the topics they write about, but when it comes to seating, I need to provide some constraints and guidance. I experimented with seating arrangements and found two that work well: U and H.
For small discussion groups of 10 or so students, I write the letter U on the corner of the blackboard and ask students to sit in a U-shaped configuration around me. We don’t move the desks; students just choose seats that form a squared-off U. In this configuration, I can see everyone’s bright shiny face, and everyone can see everyone else.
For classes with 20 to 30 students, I write the letter H in the corner of the board, and ask students to sit in a large H shape. Again, we do not move the desks, but students choose seats on the left side of the classroom or the right side of the classroom, forming the vertical legs of the H. In the middle of the classroom, students sit in one row, side by side, forming the crossbar of the H.
The U and H configurations clear away the snowdrift in the rear corner, bring students towards the front of the room, and open up the classroom so people can see each other and communicate more easily.
A Place, Not a Space
All of these art- and design-influenced interventions in the classroom have a cumulative effect, and I think these small changes transform a liminal space into a place for learning.
After the bell rings and the students wander away, I shut the windows, lug the lectern back to its place, shut down the projector, decamp from the first row, and pack things in my work bag. I turn off the overhead lights and close the door, returning the classroom to a liminal space.
Brennan Conaway used his linguistics training in a recent project to construct the Newspeak language, which George Orwell had originally conceptualized in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Brennan used the newly constructed language in his book year84, a translation of Orwell’s novel into Newspeak. He is currently working on an art project to explore interstitial spaces along urban coastlines.