SCALE-UP stands for “Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies” or “Student‐Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs.” SCALE-UP classrooms include round tables of nine students to facilitate group interactions, whiteboards near each table, networked computers, and an instructor area located near the center of the room.

Other acronyms that are used by universities for SCALE-UP environments are:

• TEAL – Technology-Enabled Active Learning
• ALC – Active Learning Classrooms
• TILE – (Spaces to) Transform, Interact, Learn, Engage

A responsive case study evaluation approach utilizing interviews and focus groups collected student and faculty perspectives on examined how instructors and students utilized a newly redesigned active learning space at Iowa State University and the relationship of this design with environmental and behavioral factors of student engagement. The findings demonstrate how classroom design affords engagement through low-cost learning tools and a flexible, open, student-centered space afforded a variety of active learning strategies. In addition, this case study highlights the importance of conducting assessment on classroom redesign initiatives to justify and improve future classroom spaces.

Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs) are learning spaces specially designed to optimize the practice of active learning and amplify its positive effects in learners from young children through university-level learners. As interest in and adoption of ALCs has increased rapidly over the last decade, the need for grounded research in their effects on learners and schools has grown proportionately. In this paper, we review the peer-reviewed published research on ALCs, dating back to the introduction of “studio” classrooms and the SCALE-UP program up to the present day. We investigate the literature and summarize findings on the effects of ALCs on learning outcomes, student engagement, and the behaviors and practices of instructors as well as the specific elements of ALC design that seem to contribute the most to these effects. We also look at the emerging cultural impact of ALCs on institutions of learning, and we examine the drawbacks of the published research as well as avenues for potential future research in this area.

Active learning classrooms (ALCs) provide opportunities for increased student engagement and interaction with classmates and the instructor. Reports indicate that students in these classrooms outperform their peers in traditional classrooms (Brooks 2011; Walker, Brooks, and Baepler 2011). In addition to these advantages, ALCs also present challenges for instructors who are used to teaching in more traditional classrooms and for students who are used to learning in these environments. In this chapter, we outline common teaching challenges in ALCs and provide strategies for overcoming them. These challenges and strategies come from the experiences of instructors we interact with in our work as teaching consultants and from our own experience teaching in ALCs. We begin with some background describing the differences between traditional classrooms and ALCs.

Active Learning Spaces : New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Number 137, edited by Paul Baepler, et al., John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uva/detail.action?docID=1662688.

Created from uva on 2026-08-31 19:15:00.

Although designed to support innovative teaching and learning practices, to succeed, active learning classrooms must be accompanied by sustained and intentional faculty development programs. Here, we address this crucial link by highlighting how two programs — the University of Iowa (Iowa) Transform, Interact, Learn, Engage (TILE) program3 and the Indiana University (Indiana) Mosaic Initiative4 — facilitate faculty development. Although both universities have spent the past several years creating new classrooms that support active learning, each institution recognized that simply adding these new classrooms was not enough. At the heart of the TILE and Mosaic programs lies an emphasis on professional development for faculty teaching in active learning classrooms, which differs fundamentally from teaching in more traditional classrooms.

Here, we explore this culture change at each university, starting with Iowa's TILE program. We first describe our early faculty development programs and their current formats, then offer case studies, and finally, explore our respective faculty development programs' wide-ranging, long-term impacts on teaching and learning.

In this article, we present a revised version of the active learning classroom observation tool (ALCOT), designed in 2015, to support instructor reflection on instructional approaches applied within active learning classrooms. The design of active learning classrooms and teaching approaches within them have changed significantly since the initial development of the ALCOT. Inspired by these changes, we have decided to update the ALCOT to address the new developments in classroom designs and instruction. In addition to updates to the ALCOT, this article also lays out ways the new ALCOT can be used for additional avenues of faculty support. It also suggests how classroom observation can facilitate conversation among a variety of stakeholders that could contribute to broad institutional change regarding active learning and active learning classrooms.

While Active Learning Classrooms, or ALCs, offer rich new environments for learning, they present many new challenges to faculty because, among other things, they eliminate the room’s central focal point and disrupt the conventional seating plan to which faculty and students have become accustomed.The importance of learning how to use these classrooms well and to capitalize on their special features is paramount. The potential they represent can be realized only when they facilitate improved learning outcomes and engage students in the learning process in a manner different from traditional classrooms and lecture halls.This book provides an introduction to ALCs, briefly covering their history and then synthesizing the research on these spaces to provide faculty with empirically based, practical guidance on how to use these unfamiliar spaces effectively. Among the questions this book addresses are:• How can instructors mitigate the apparent lack of a central focal point in the space?• What types of learning activities work well in the ALCs and take advantage of the affordances of the room?• How can teachers address familiar classroom-management challenges in these unfamiliar spaces?• If assessment and rapid feedback are critical in active learning, how do they work in a room filled with circular tables and no central focus point?• How do instructors balance group learning with the needs of the larger class?• How can students be held accountable when many will necessarily have their backs facing the instructor?• How can instructors evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching in these spaces?This book is intended for faculty preparing to teach in or already working in this new classroom environment; for administrators planning to create ALCs or experimenting with provisionally designed rooms; and for faculty developers helping teachers transition to using these new spaces.