Is it very technological? Are there interactive whiteboards? Do students have tablets, or do they still use paper and pen?

Are students still in rows,lined up facing the teacher?

15 comments

  2. In my university, few things have changed in the last 50 years.

    – Sure, computers appeared in some rooms, but the furniture? It’s mostly from the 60’s and 70’s and roughly the same furniture as in elementary and high schools, so it’s not very comfortable. That’s one thing I preferred in the online semesters, using my own comfortable chair and desk.

    – You don’t have too many plug sockets in most big auditoriums (maybe 4-5 that aren’t by the cathedra for the professors), so charging your laptop isn’t really possible unless it’s a smaller auditorium, where you might get a chance to get to a socket.

    – most teachers don’t write on the boards (those are also chalk boards, painted either green or black, in my case the small ones are mostly green, the big systems with 2-3 boards are black. And they’re almost never repainted), but this is the Faculty of Humanities.

    – some of the rooms are really small, but despite Covid, more than 20 people have to fit in there.

    – In high school, we used to have white boards that doubled as screens for projectors and also interactive boards. Since those required special pens with batteries, they were rarely used, because the boards were financed by the EU, but the batteries weren’t. Some teachers in my high school asked their whiteboards to be removed to be able to use the old green chalkboards (those weren’t changed to the white ones, the new ones were simply mounted to the green ones) because they couldn’t afford to buy the whiteboard markers, which should’ve been provided by the school, but there was no money for them. I mean, batteries are actually cheaper and those weren’t provided either. But chalk is definitely cheaper than whiteboard markers.

    – projectors are fairly common, but unless it’s a lecture with many people (over 50) that requires an actual auditorium, no one really uses them.

  3. Depends on the canton and on the school. I had two internships last year in two different gymnasiums within the same canton. One had a big screen that was also a smart whiteboard. In the other, I was glad if the projector decided to work today.

    Gymnasiums in general have a “bring your own device”-policy. Students are expected to bring a tablet or laptop with them and teachers are encouraged, but not forced, to teach accordingly.

    My impression however is, that students enjoy a less screeny-keyboardy and more personal approach in school from time to time. Variation brings joy.

    In schools, but also universities, it differs also by the faculty and subjects. In Classics, many people still prefer to take notes manually.

    The classroom layout is often kinda U-shaped, or like |_|.

  4. Standard schools are pretty traditional I’d say. Only technology is a computer and a projector. Along with that you have the usual chalkboard. Students use paper and pen. Students are lined up in rows.

    In university it depends on what kind of classes. The really huge big massive ones will be in giant [aula’s](https://nieuws.kuleuven.be/nl/2017/vesalius-verwelkomt-eerste-menselijke-lichamen–nieuwe-aula-in-gebruik/image) which can house hundreds of students. Smaller classes will look more like those in high schools.

  6. Each school is different. For example my high school didn’t have a football field, only a big gym hall. My middle school didn’t have neither. But almost every school has both. In high school we didn’t have a chemistry lab, while in some schools there are labs.

    Classrooms generally look like this: the teacher’s desk in the front, a blackboard on the wall, and three rows of desks, each desk for two people. Are they very technological? No. Are there interactive whiteboards? Rarely. Do students have tablets? Ahahahahahah, nope.

    And when it comes to universities, it really varies. I studied pharmacy so there were no classrooms, there were labs. And to be honest my faculty’s building looked exactly like in late 1970s or 1980s. Once upon a time there was fire in one part of the building and it was restored. If not for that, the entire building would look like during communist Poland. Seriously. The thorough restoration happened in late 2010s only because it would have to be closed for good if no restoration was made. Students literally studied in the exact same environment and used the same glassware and lab equipment as their parents if they studied there.

  7. My school in rural France (Dordogne) and the school I moved to in rural England (Somerset) were starkly different. The schools were of a similar size (~200-300 pupils), however the resources and classrooms were far more advanced in England. In France every classroom had a blackboard and desks arranged in a thin long line moving away from the board – the walls were full of displays that were decades old and largely irrelevant to anything we ever studied. There were 4 early 2000s era computers running an old version of Windows for the entire school to share. I moved to England in 2010 and the classrooms there had displays that were personalised by each teacher who taught in that particular room, the scratchy blackboards were replaced with *electronic whiteboards*, and the school had two computer rooms, one with Windows computers that were replaced every 3 years and one with Apple Macs. The school had a *gym* and all sorts of equipment, a swimming pool etc… the previous school had none of this, just a tarmac courtyard with faded markings on the ground like hopscotch. I remember as a child it was like I was entering some utopia. I don’t know if it was the particular areas I was living in, but it felt like moving from the third to to the first world.

  8. I went through a few different classroom styles growing up. From 1st to 4th grade we still had classes in an old school building with blackboards, chalk, and erasers, and the lighting wasn’t so great.

    5th-9th grade the classrooms I had lessons in had in were much brighter, had better lights, and we had whiteboards and pens, as well as a computer in the corner (which oddly enough had GTA2).

    Then in high school it was a mixed bag, because it was mostly old buildings and one relatively more recent one. I had art and geometry lessons in the same building used for the more vocational professional courses, and one of the classrooms was next to a garage. I didn’t have classes in rooms with computers outside of a computer lab which we used for a multimedia class. After I left the school began renovations, and a few years later I went to pick up my sister and it looked so modern and sleek!

    University was better on that front. While the classrooms weren’t what you’d consider fancy, they were overall in good condition and they all had projectors. A lot of classes I had in a room full of iMacs, the auditoriums were all very nice, the library was modern, and the campus had really nice grounds including even a lake. Our main classroom had our tables arranged in a U-format, and everyone had their own laptop.

  9. Depends on which class you are taking, sometimes it is a lecture in a big lecture hall with those pull-out tables, but more workshop-style classes are in a regular classroom where the tables can be arranged in any way. In any case there is often a digital board with a small whiteboard on the side. Most students take a laptop but there will still be some with paper and pen. Also phones are often used for interactive parts.

  10. In the early days of Primary school the students rows didnt even have to be rows. They could be placed roughly in any manner the teacher and students wanted. The lower years of primary school is still mostly pen and paper so you learn this shit. But in “högstadiet” in primary school, laptops become a lot more common for doing school work. Students rows will be faced towards the whiteboard and the teacher at this stage and the same later on. My school had bought in interactive whiteboards but they sucked ass and was never used.

    Essentially all high schools offer a laptop to their student during their 3 years even if pen and paper schoolwork still happen but mostly to take notes or maths, physics, chemistry and biology. My high school bought in 65 inch displays for several classrooms that had this whiteboard program and could connect to your laptop so you could do presentations and all that. Considering I just graduated High School last year this is the current state of High school education in the country (and/or my city)

  11. I think it all depends on the course you are taking. If it has maths in it I always use a pen and paper, because it’s so much easier to just write it down than type it out in case of an equation.

  12. Universities in the UK generally have well provisioned lecture halls and classrooms, with a great variety depending on need. Commercialisation of the system has meant that universities compete with each other, so get the shiniest buildings with the most fancy equipment.

    Unfortunately not a single University I know has actually properly educated the lecturers to make the most of any of that equipment, so quite frequently all that is being used is endless Powerpoint slides. This was most starkly illustrated at my former employer where a £500,000 3D interactive suite (with absolutely stunning capabilities) usually got pushed into the corner of the room and never actually got used for its intended purposes. Every open day though, it got switched on showing how amazing it was with an interactive demo.

    Prospective students love it…

  13. I saw the transition from paper taking notes at uni from laptop note taking

    In my first year of uni in 2014, in the auditorium, we were in the majority taking notes on paper and writing stuff down instead of using laptops. In group workshop I seldom saw someone taking the notes/corrections on their laptops.

    During my last year of bachelor degree (2018) I switched to laptop note taking but from what I can remember it was close to 50/50 between between those of us with laptops and the others taking notes by hand, it was the same in class and in group workshop.

    Last year I taught 1st year student in a group workshop and the vast majority of the students used laptops, one time I counted and of 40-45 students I had in one group, 3 were writing notes and the others were typing

  14. Most classrooms either have an interactive whiteboard or a regular whiteboard that can have stuff projected onto it. A majority of classrooms wi have projectors.

    We still have to write all of our work in a book which is kept in the classroom (unless you’re using it to revise). Some subjects are on the computer (ICT, PE coursework and Skills Challenge). Also some lessons you get to use your phone or a school laptop to complete a certain task.

    The tables used to often be arranged in squares, but due to covid they had to move all of the tables so they were all in rows facing the front of the classroom, apart from science, as those tables can’t be moved.

  15. Interactive whiteboards and Wifi coverage have become standard over the last decade, but in most schools, it’s BYOD for tablets (or convertibles). For specific subjects though, like arts, physics, computer science etc, there are devices available with specific apps installed that are provided to students on a per-class basis.

    Same goes for universities: Students are expected to bring a laptop or tablet to class, but students are supposed to pay for the hardware (and in parts, for the software) by themselves.

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