360 degree approach of lecture hall for teaching

Abstract

Ashfaq Akram, Farzana Rizwan, Nurul Azimah Ahmad Arzaai,Robina Shaheen, Nabishah Mohamad

Summary Delivering a lecture is a traditional teaching method in medical schools and it is a dilemma to make it effective for many lecturers especially when the class size is large. Much has been explored on teaching methodology but less has been focused on design of lecture halls and laboratories used as venue for large sized classes. A 360 degree is the new architectural design of lecture hall meant for large size class having teacher’s site called source of information (SOI) in the middle. Around the SOI, the seating arrangement of students is in a complete circle rather than ordinary rectangle or D shaped lecture halls. This design as hypothesis shrinks half of the seating area and would transform the large size class into a small size class. This would enhance to monitor the students and more likely be easy to interact with students who use to sit on backbenches and keep their distance quite far from teachers in traditional teaching method. This is also applied to laboratory designs reserved for large size classes. 360 degree lecture hall may likely to be effective. But a pilot study is suggested to assess the reliability of this architectural design.