Giving Compass' Take:

•  Shawna De La Rosa, writing for Education Dive, discusses how schools can better position themselves as learning space to advance modern career skills through design and rearrangement. 

• How can schools measure the impact of redesign and furniture arrangement on building student skills sets? 

• Read more about the reasoning behind flexible learning environments. 

Today's students will enter a workforce with fewer cubicles and more collaboration space. Classroom design should be fashioned to reflect the real work world into which they will soon enter, eSchool News reports.

Beaver Country Day School in Newton, Massachusetts, recently completed a redesign that started with asking the students what they wanted. Administrators replaced rows of desks and chairs with flex-space furniture that allows for both individual and group learning.

Hallways are used as a classroom extension that allows students to meet in small groups. Students use meeting rooms along with the faculty. The flexible environment allows for creative collaboration, while still giving students an option to study alone.

The best news is that this classroom rearrangement can be affordable. Incorporating features like color, soft light and comfortable spaces doesn’t have to be expensive. Using budget-friendly furniture manufacturers, such as Ikea, is one way to stretch the redesign budget as far as possible.

Soon, inflexible desks won’t even be an option. With sales of the desk-chair combo decreasing, some educational furniture companies are planning to discontinue the model completely. Modern customers are seeking flexible furniture that encourages students to interact and develop peer-to-peer learning skills.

The Khan Lab School exemplifies these changes with spaces for students to work on laptops with friends or on comfy couches alone. Since fewer school supplies are needed, thanks to laptops and Chromebooks, a desk with a built-in cubby is almost obsolete.

Read the full article about equipping learning spaces for better career skills by Shawna De La Rosa at Education Dive.