TMCnews Featured Article

Combining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in real-world lessons, STEM education helps students make connections between school, work, and the global economy. STEM’s goal is to increase America’s talent pool by improving K-12 mathematics and science education to keep the U.S. in the forefront of innovation and technology. Interior Concepts furniture and room design will help to facilitate STEM curriculum and programs to maximize learning.

Interior Concepts has been designing in educational environments long before the term STEM became popular, so the call center, office and educational furniture company has a great deal of experience to draw from in order to create an effective learning space. Interior Concepts offers some suggestions for the best strategy to facilitate learning using furniture and space design in an academic setting.

Determine the number of students who will use the classroom and how many students will work together in a group. Find out if computers and technology equipment will need to be placed on top of the worksurfaces and whether these items will be used individually or shared.

Then determine if you will need a staging area, a place where students will gather into a central location before they break into groups to work on their projects. If a staging area is required, tables in the center of the room create a flexible meeting space that can be moved as needed. Depending on the size of the room, either round or typical classroom style tables will work well.

Determine the size, shape, and amount of materials that need to be stored in the classroom. Designing the storage area to fit the curriculum will avoid problems related to insufficient storage space. Decide whether a central storage area will be needed and if it would be more convenient to provide storage in group areas.

To foster a collaborative environment, consider the teaching style by thinking about what type of instructor desk will work best in the room. This can include a desk with a meeting space, a lectern, or a combination of the two. Decide whether mobility in the instructor desk is important and what technology the instructor workstation needs. A storage area can be built into the instructor desk to store equipment and provide access to wall outlets keeping the area neat by storing equipment, cords, and cables. Solutions include half-round table at the end of each workstation grouping, or a single table making sure students can view whiteboards and other technology.

Design a comfortable working environment for students by knowing the age of the students that the room needs to serve. If the room needs to serve multiple age groups, consider using height-adjustable chairs to accommodate various students.  Sizing the furniture correctly and designing the workstations to coordinate with the curriculum and tasks will create an engaging working environment for students.

Interior Concepts suggests that before working with a technology and furniture representative, get a CAD drawing of the space and set a goal of how many students you need the room to accommodate. The representative will note the location of doors, windows, columns, heater vents on the CAD drawing. Also, be aware of power access as it may determine the layout of student workstations in the room.

Completing the room design in a functional order will make the room remodel or build proceed faster and smoother.