Mike Urbancic, senior instructor of economics and Williams Fellow, has provided more than 25 seating charts of large classrooms to support colleagues. These excel-based charts now incorporated into the classroom information available at classrooms.uoregon.edu. (See an example for Straub 156)
Seating charts help instructors learn and use students' names, and they can be used to form and promote small groups for in-class activities and discussions. "When the enrollment is lower than the capacity of the room, instructors can use seating charts to leave specific seats or rows empty either to help delineate groups or seating zones or to improve their movement through the room and access to students," Urbancic says. "Eliciting input from students through a survey allows instructors to meet students’ individual needs while crafting the seating assignments. For instance, left-handed students will likely prefer left-handed desks or tables. Students may express a wish to be near an exit due to anxiety or to be near the front of the room to help them focus."
Dr. Urbancic on Day One of fall 2021