Today, I spent my lunch break in an online presentation on “the importance of the room” given by Marie Leijon from Malmö University as part of the “Accessibility Tuesday” series at LU, and I am very glad I did! So many things to think about!

Since the presentation was in Swedish and I cannot yet passively listen to a presentation while thinking about something else but still kinda keep track of what is going on, coming back from my thoughts into the presentation is as if I am stepping into a room with an ongoing conversation that I had left for a while. That is to say, I probably missed a lot of things, because the points I DID listen to made me think about my own experiences.

Before the meeting started, the hosts and some early participants were talking about their zoom backgrounds. During the pandemic, I have argued a lot for showing where we really are instead of using backgrounds (in order to show social presence, read more here), but now I was thinking about it in terms of accessibility. Am I maybe distracting from what I want to talk about when there is a lot of visual clutter, or cute pets, or any other random stuff in the background? But what is the signal I am sending when I show myself in front of a clearly artificial background, like for example our university main building? My perception of that is always that someone does not want me to know where they really are (although there might of course also be other reasons), but maybe a compromise could be to only switch on the background at a certain stage? Funnily enough, the speaker had an artificial background that showed bookshelves. There was even the university’s logo clearly visible on that image, yet I felt much less like “ha ha, guess where I am at!”. And I know that I have used backgrounds of a Norwegian cabin with fjord view in meetings before when I really didn’t want people to know where I am at… Anyway, that is what I was thinking about before the presentation even began. What signals are we sending?

Signals were a big topic of the presentation, too. Or at least of the parts that I listened to. Who we planned for and create access for is who will be able to join, at all or easily, and who will thus feel welcome. And the rooms we use to teach in are “architectural embodiments of educational philosophies”. If everything is centred on speaker, students sitting on similar chairs in rows behind each other, it is very easy to fall into a teacher-centred approach and not see students as individuals. On the other hand, a classical lecture theatre signals to students that they are in Higher Education now, not in school any more, and students think they learn a lot in lectures (even though that isn’t actually true). Rooms do carry meaning beyond just being a volume of air protected from the elements, an old library, for example, can be awe-inducing or scary or any number of other things.

And the room we are in will necessarily influence how we teach, even based on whether we have a projector or a blackboard, whether we can pin things somewhere or have surfaces to set things on… That’s why I always try to check a room before I have to teach in it, to see what I am working with an what I can possibly adapt (either in the room, or in my methods to make them work in a less-than-ideal setting).

Also, we all have different experiences of the same space. I, for example, like a little distance from other people. Workshops in which we are supposed to sit so close in groups of threes that our knees are touching are my worst nightmare (and I’ve been there). And if I can choose a seat in a room, I will always go for a wall in my back and a good view out of the window. I think it’s a bit about safety, and also about not sit in the sun, but clearly other people choose different seats for different reasons (or even if they wanted mine, they might want if for different reasons than I do). I know I appreciate efforts by a teacher to make the room welcoming, for example one of the trainers I took a lot of courses with during my PhD always put fresh flowers in the middle of the circle we would sit in (but on the other hand I hate sitting in circles without tables…). And there is research on how the sense of belonging is influenced by whether a room is decorated, for example, by Star Wars posters, or nature posters. From personal experience I can tell you that pin-up posters in labs did not make me feel welcome (or safe, really). So again, what signals are we sending to students just by the rooms we meet them in?

One very interesting part of the presentation was about room and activity diagrams, where different elements of a teaching room were arranged in many different ways: Projection surfaces on one or several walls or in the centre; where the teacher is, in the centre, the front, hidden amongst students;  where students sit, in rows, a big circle, around group tables; directions how interaction flows, from teacher to students, in all directions, in small groups… I know that in a course I teach in a specific room, there is always one group out of five that stands out, and that group is always sitting at the same table. Probably not because of the participants that actually sit at that table, but because they have the most direct access to the teacher… So what about the other four tables? How could we set up the room in a way to avoid this?

One suggestion I really liked was to ask students: “How are you reading the room?” Active vs passive, alone vs together. Even just addressing the influence of the room is such a great idea that I have never had beyond the “sorry about the bad light”, or air, or noise outside!

Anyway, I got lot of new things to think about (as I sat in the 1m2 large room in the office that only contains a desk and a chair and two screens and a desk lamp, and that I usually use to take video calls in). That room is dark, badly ventilated, always very cold, yet somehow still preferable for calls compared to our open space office. Interesting!

Featured image on top of this post: This is my favourite “accessibility” image. Climb up the stairs and end up in a wall. I always think it’s hilarious to walk past there to meet with colleagues!