Education pedagogies

Returning to the Classroom

Returning to school or campus will challenge every institution to rethink their capabilities for providing blended in-person and remote learning experiences to help create a safer environment for students, educators and administrators.

Education pedagogies continue to evolve thanks to new technology tools and on-demand access to vast digital libraries of information. The digital transformation is twofold – students who are actively consuming information through different modes and mediums and educators who are now dispensing information through team-driven engagement methodologies as well as remotely. While educational experiences are adaptive and responsive to these changes, the classroom environment has lagged significantly, hindering the effectiveness of these new ways of learning.

Furthermore, the impact of the health crisis has significantly disrupted the educational system and compelled educators and the creators of learning spaces to rethink the structure of classrooms, libraries, hallways, common areas and the learning spaces in between.

Play VideoCentering Wellbeing in Learning Spaces Webinar

Centering Wellbeing in Learning Spaces Webinar

There is a wellbeing crisis in education, one that the pandemic has exponentially exacerbated. Based on recent Steelcase research, this webinar will speak to the importance of centering wellbeing in teaching and learning experiences, offer six pillars of wellbeing as a path to cultivate it, and showcase the important role that the built environment plays in nurturing individual and communal wellbeing.

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Play VideoRosedale Day School Tour

Rosedale Day School Tour

With schools opening, students and teachers at RDS continue to engage and inspire.

Rosedale Day School (RDS) engaged POI to help them create a 21st century learning environment in a Manhattan-style mixed commercial and residential facility in the heart of Toronto. With progressive thinking driving increased attendance, RDS took on an extra floor due to its expansion requirements.

At RDS, students are able to work in the classroom with new learning pedagogies that foster collaboration while being supported by movement and choice.  POI selected Steelcase Nodes, Verb tables and whiteboards, as well as collaborative technology sharing mediascapes. Also featured was Smith Systems furniture, customized to the JK-8 environment.

POI effectively took a commercial space and converted it into open teachable space inclusive of 4 classrooms, a meeting space and study hall, as well as 3 back offices. The 6:1 student to staff ratio makes RDS a forerunner in delivering progressive private elementary school education and a CAIS Canadian accredited learning institution.

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Learn Better

Even before the pandemic, education was undergoing a transformation that will go on long after the virus threat subsides. The experiences students, educators and administrators have had during the pandemic has to have accelerated and amplified trends in education that were already in motion.

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Adaptive Holistic Solutions

As we navigate what’s next, solutions need to be holistic and consider not just furniture, but also materials, technology, planning paradigms and even behaviors and protocols. We strive to curate solutions that are rooted in the science of infection control and work with human health experts to define national and local guidelines for what makes a school or campus safe. We also want to be practical, providing ideas that educational institutions can adopt now for the return to school and campus, but in a responsible way that also looks ahead to the near and far. Educational institutions must immediately be made safer, but also more resilient and more adaptive to the changes we can only imagine as new factors impact this ever-changing world.

Multifunctionalize Your Education Spaces

POI is focused on helping schools, colleges and universities create the most effective, rewarding and inspiring active learning environments to meet the evolving needs of students and educators. Using an insight-led approach, we offer solutions for the many spaces where learning happens, from classrooms and libraries to in-between spaces and cafes. We have a passion for understanding how learning best takes place and how smarter, active learning spaces can help.

Furniture in the classroom and within educational facilities needs to be multifunctional, inspire creativity to achieve deeper learning, and maximize the space while keeping the same look and feel throughout.

CASE STUDIES

Solutions to Help You Achieve Better Results

Trends towards active learning include: integrating user-friendly technology with classroom and lecture furniture, creating social hubs and study areas for collaboration, flexible furniture to optimize space and new learning tools. Steelcase products are designed with the research and development resources of the world’s largest office furniture manufacturer. Their products are ideal for such applications as interactive classrooms, cyber cafés, breakout rooms and training facilities.

Products manufactured by Kwalu are built to be virtually indestructible, scratch resistant, fire retardant, waterproof and graffiti proof. As a result, the products are ideal for dormitories, student unions, lounges, dining areas and libraries.

Whether your educational facility is renovating an existing space or creating new state-of-the-art campuses, POI can provide economical strategies and smart furniture solutions.

CASE STUDIES

Featured Blog

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Ensure Classroom Furniture Supports an Active Learning Environment

Ensure Classroom Furniture Supports an Active Learning Environment

Take a look around the classroom. Do the students look engaged, or do they appear to be in a more passive state, listening rather than participating?

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Classroom and Education Furniture

Node Classroom
Verb Classroom
media:scape LearnLab

Node Classroom

Supporting the Many Modes of Learning

Educators are often faced with a tough choice: promote active learning or fit as many students as possible into a classroom without much flexibility. Until now.

The Node chair is mobile and flexible. It’s designed for quick transitions between room configurations. With Node, a classroom can flex from lecture mode to groups, and back again without interruption. Node can take passive space and make it active, supporting active and team based learning, even when student density is important.
View the Node Chair

Play Videonode classroom chair and Tribeca

Featured Case Studies

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Conestoga

Conestoga College set out with a plan to construct an International Students’ Campus and chose Kitchener’s Market Square to do so. The College engaged POI as educational environment experts to provide both insights as well as curated, durable furnishing solutions. The Campus would be an exciting, edgy, and exhilarating environment that would stimulate student engagement, collaboration and learning in a non-traditional setting.

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Leddy Library Collaboratory, University of Windsor

POI worked with Di Maio Design Associates Architect Inc. to develop a unique, functional and collaborative area for U of W as part of a broader plan to create different neighbourhoods where students could meet, interact, hangout and present. The Collaboratory at Leddy Library was created as a destination space and meeting hub for students on campus. In designing the space, POI and the architect, with direction from U of W, decided to implement an indigenous theme and committed to making it a welcoming zone for all students.

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Rosedale Day School

Rosedale Day School (RDS) engaged POI to help them create a 21st century learning environment in a Manhattan-style mixed commercial and residential facility in the heart of Toronto. With progressive thinking driving increased attendance, RDS took on an extra floor due to its expansion requirements.

Algoma University

Product Solutions

brody featured product

Brody

Introducing the Brody WorkLounge and Desk. Designed to be good for your body and good for your brain.

thread

Thread

Thread simplifies power distribution, providing power to the devices we use and the places where we work and learn.

buoy 2

Buoy

Height-adjustable and designed to promote movement in the workplace, Buoy’s curved base engages your core as you tilt, wobble and spin.

Verb Whiteboard by Steelcase

Verb

Verb is an integrated collection of classroom furniture including tables, whiteboards, and instructor lectern and desk stations designed to support a full range of teaching and learning styles.

Campfire Paper Table by turnstone

Campfire Paper Table

Campfire Paper Table, by turnstone, is topped with a giant stack of paper, so you can just load up your thoughts, rip it off and start over the next day.

Regard Lounge by Steelcase

Regard

The Regard modular lounge system supports times of transition to make every moment more meaningful.

Insights

Active Learning Spaces

Educational change is happening and happening fast for the first time in decades, and some schools from primary through higher education are in the midst of experiencing:

  • What it means to be learner centric
  • Why the use of problem–,project– or inquiry-based education strategies in formal learning spaces is important; and
  • How educational professional development, technology and space can be used as effective tools to support this

Many educators are embracing a more active and immersive style of instruction, engaging with students, leveraging technology and exploring more and varied educational strategies.

Formal + Informal Learning Spaces

Formal learning spaces where technology and the physical space are integrated to support pedagogy and create a more active and engaging experience for instructors and students.

Informal learning spaces should offer students a range of places and the choice and control to select the best environment for their needs–focused individual study, dyadic work, or large team collaborative.