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There is no hiding in the back of the 21st century classrooms under construction at Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Think TED Talks meets British Parliament, where students are engaged in a technologically rich environment.

The building and its classrooms are a break from the traditional lecture hall and designed to create more interactive and technological environments that will meet the needs of teacher and learner for the next 50 years, said Michael Tingley, principal for Boora Architects, the designer of the $51 million project in the heart of the OSU campus.

Students are in the process of naming what’s being called the “OSU Classroom Building,” which will be the home of the Honors College and Integrated Instructional Resource Center. The building is slated to open by fall 2015.

“We wanted these to be most sophisticated teaching spaces on campus with the most robust technology,” Tingley said. “These classrooms are designed to capture these students’ attention and make going to class something they’re more engaged in instead of starting at the back of everyone’s heads.”

Among the different classroom layouts is a larger arena-style one that will have 600 seats and situate students in a circle no further than seven rows, or 40 feet, from the instructor. A smaller arena-style classroom will have 300 seats – none any further than 30 feet from the instructor.

Another design is modeled after the layout of the British Parliament. It’s a curved, double-loaded configuration that seats 185 and will allow more group interaction and flexible presentation locations. Students will sit directly across from each other, with the teacher space in the middle.

“We wanted to deliver an experience that students couldn’t get online,” said John Gremmels, senior project manager for OSU. “As we go into the future of teaching, a lot of teaching and learning is reacting with the people you are learning with, especially your instructors. We have three classrooms that are more advanced.”

The classrooms come heavily loaded with technology, including a four-paneled audio-visual display, which has four pairs of projectors tied to a single source, Tingley said. The projectors are synced so they broadcast the same image simultaneously. Additionally, a wireless microphone system allows the instructor to walk around the room and project visuals onto the screens from a tablet, he said.

Students, meanwhile, will be able (with teacher approval) to project whatever is on their laptops onto the bigger screen for everyone to see, he said.

The project’s general contractor, Fortis Construction, plans to build a full-size mock-up of the 14-foot tall, stretched fabric wall system off-site, said Tim Sissel, project manager. The mock-up is needed to make sure every joint is perfectly smooth and the screen fabric is pristine and flat, he said.

“People won’t have to turn their head,” he said. “Wherever they’re seated, they’ll have a clear view of the screen.”

Boora designed its classrooms and the building after holding a series of sessions with OSU students and faculty to learn what worked in traditional classrooms and what didn’t, Gremmels said. They looked at 10 different types of classroom environments, ranging from the very traditional to the most unusual, basing some of their ideas on performing arts environments, he said.

“We started talking about some of the challenges that they are trying to overcome in large lecture halls, such as getting students engaged and the ability of the instructor to break students up into groups,” Tingley said. “There wasn’t really a model. They wanted us to rethink what a traditional classroom design was.”

Students shared their frustrations about instructors who typically unplugged themselves from a podium after class and had little time or space to meet and answer questions. Hallways were designed as traffic corridors; thousands of students would enter and exit a building in the 10-minute window between classes. There was little space to meet and ask questions, he said.

Boora’s design incorporates the concept of “flow regulators,” which locates hallways on the perimeter of the building instead of classrooms.

The approach not only creates multiple points for students to enter and exit the classroom, but also creates informal gathering spaces with daylight and views outside the building. Moving the classrooms to the center of the building also eliminates daylight glare and thermal heat loss, Tingley said.

Construction challenges

Fortis has faced several challenges building the OSU Classroom Building.

First, the site is on an aquifer and has poor soil, so Fortis had to drill 913 holes, each 40 feet deep. In those columns, Fortis installed stone columns that went into the bedrock, said Tim Sissel, project manager.

The theater-style seating of the classrooms also is creating obstacles. For instance, a sizable audio-visual package needs to be installed in the 25-foot-high ceilings from a sloped floor, he said. Fortis will station its mechanical lifts on the slab and build the ceilings before building the floors of the classrooms, he said.

Typically, rooms are built from the floor and up.

“In this case, we can’t because the permanent floor will be tiered,” he said. “We’re intentionally doing the work off the depressed slab before we install the tiered classroom slab.”

The classrooms also require about a dozen large spans measuring 80 feet long horizontally and weighing 25,000 pounds. The beams will be set as one piece by a tower crane and an assist crane, Sissel said.

Between May and July, large flatbed trucks will deliver the beams along with four 40,000-pound plate girders that will be bolted, welded and installed.

“That will be a challenge because we are dead center at the heart of the campus,” he said. “There will be heavy foot and bike traffic coordination to make sure that kids on their bikes and students walking to and from class are safe.”

Fortis has four certified flaggers at strategic locations around the site to coordinate traffic flows, Sissel said. – Jeff McDonald