Photos: New Year Brings New Classrooms and Learning Spaces at Posvar Hall
Students returned from winter break Jan. 8 to innovative new learning spaces at Wesley W. Posvar Hall.
As part of an ongoing $7.2 million renovation, three former auditorium-style classrooms have been transformed into lecture halls designed for interactive teaching and learning with multiple spaces nearby for outside-the-classroom study.
The trio of classrooms — 1500, 1501 and 1502 (formerly 1700) Posvar Hall — would be unrecognizable to students who sat in the dimly lit auditorium-style lecture halls just a year ago. Closed at the end of the 2017 spring term, the rooms have undergone an amazing transformation.
Natural light pours in where windows have been added facing the Forbes Quadrangle. The renovated rooms share a soft, muted color scheme reminiscent of Pitt’s official blue and gold. Carpeted entrance corridors separate the rooms from the noise of the building’s expansive main corridor. More energy-efficient mechanical systems include floor vents to deliver heating and cooling closer to occupants.
“There’s been a lot of changes in education, and, more importantly, changes in the types of skills and talents that our students need when they graduate,” Provost Patricia E. Beeson told members of the campus community during a Jan. 5 open house preview of the new spaces.
Students need more than to merely have information — it’s readily available online.
“They have an advantage by knowing how to use that information. By knowing how to find it, how to apply it to their problems, how to work in teams, how to take that knowledge and really extend it,” Beeson said. “That kind of learning doesn’t happen by someone lecturing at you for an hour or two hours or three hours. That kind of learning happens by engaging with the material, by engaging with people in the classroom.”
The new classrooms have been updated with whiteboards, video screens and the latest classroom technology. Seating — most of it moveable — has been designed to facilitate group study; attention to acoustics ensures that conversation can be heard despite the large spaces.
“They’re actually very different classrooms that are going to facilitate learning in a very different way,” the provost said.
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