Students Are Bored: Engage Them With Innovative Learning Spaces

Students are becoming increasingly bored at school but creating innovative learning spaces may help to re-engage them in their learning.

Research suggests that students become less engaged the more time they spend in school, moving up each grade level. According to a 2013 Gallup poll of students in grades five through 12, nearly eight in 10 elementary students surveyed were engaged with school, but by the time these students reached high school, only four in 10 were still actively engaged.

Students spend nearly one-sixth of their waking hours in school, meaning that the classrooms and learning spaces they spend their time in have a significant impact on how engaged they are. Innovative learning spaces play an important part in finding an end to the student boredom epidemic. With well-designed, modern learning spaces that focus on students interests and needs, students are more likely to engage with their learning and enjoy coming to school every day.

Here are four ideas to re-engage students by creating innovative learning spaces:

Create Learning Zones

Creating unique classroom learning zones helps to personalize the learning environment to meet the diverse needs of students. With differentiated learning areas, students can take a variety of approaches to engage with different types of learning content and activities. Specified learning zones in the classroom give students voice and choice over how and where they would like to learn throughout the day.

Promote Engagement With Visual Interest

The look and feel of an innovative learning space is just as important to promoting engagement as the function of the space itself. Elements like temperature and air flow, lighting, and even the color palette of a learning environment have a significant impact on student engagement and learning. Selecting furnishings that are unique and offer visual interest––like curved bookcases and curved seating––can also help to engage students.

Offer Flexible Seating Options

Flexible seating options support modern, active learning practices, and play an important role in promoting collaboration, student-centered learning, and greater student engagement. Offering a variety of seating options from floor seating to standing desks allows students to engage with their learning on their own terms, avoiding both boredom and discomfort.

Encourage Movement in Learning Spaces

Designing innovative learning spaces that encourage movement can offer benefits to students’ physical health, emotional wellbeing, focus, engagement, and cognitive function. Learning zones, flexible seating, and active learning spaces all help to keep students moving around the classroom throughout the day as their learning needs change. In a classroom that supports movement, students are less likely to find themselves bored throughout the day.

Students’ engagement in the classroom creates a foundation for academic success, so it’s critical that learning spaces are designed to support engaged learners. At MiEN, we know how to take even the most drab classrooms to the next level, creating exciting, innovative learning spaces that captivate every student. With innovative furnishings and creative design, we can turn the statistics around, creating spaces that keep students consistently engaged until they graduate!