Every instructor has been there: a vital adapter goes missing three minutes before class, a clunky control panel stalls a lesson, or a rigid room layout actively fights against student collaboration. These small frustrations add sand to the gears of daily education. Historically, classroom designs have often felt handed down without enough input from the educators who inhabit them.

University Media Services and Interim CTO Kyle Martin want to permanently flip that script. Backed by a new grant, the Future Ready Classrooms initiative—a collaborative partnership between IT, Facilities, and the Registrar—is an open invitation for faculty to step into the driver’s seat and design the environments they’ve always wanted.

Beyond Flashy Tech: A Holistic Approach

This project isn’t an excuse to push flashy, unnecessary gadgets; nobody is trying to project holograms into your lectures. Instead, it is a holistic, top-to-bottom re-evaluation of the physical and digital spaces where education happens.

The initiative looks at the classroom as a complete ecosystem. On the technical side, the team is investigating high-impact adjustments like streamlined USB-C connectivity, intuitive touch-panel designs, and accessibility features like automated closed captioning and assistive listening systems.

But equal weight is being given to the non-technical elements that dictate the energy of a room:

• The Desktop Debate: Choosing between dedicated classroom computers or optimizing for a "Bring Your Own Device" (BYOD) model.

• The Analog Canvas: Determining whether chalkboards or dry-erase marker boards genuinely serve instructors better.

• Physical Logistics: Selecting furniture that actually functions. For example, the university previously discovered that trendy, round-based rolling chairs didn’t fit student backpacks, scattering bags across the floor and rendering the "modular" furniture un-movable. The project aims to take that feedback and consider the functionality of furniture—not just style and comfort.

• Environmental Psychology: Investigating research on how specific wall paint colors can measurably facilitate or hinder student learning retention.

While an immense amount of data exists regarding K-12 learning spaces, very little of it successfully translates to the unique realities of higher education. This grant gives our campus the rare opportunity to pioneer that research ourselves.

A Three-Semester Living Laboratory

To turn theory into reality, the university is launching a phased, iterative testing process over the next three semesters. Each semester, the team will completely overhaul a standard 40-to-50-seat lecture hall alongside a dedicated problem-based learning room.

Information gathering and faculty focus groups begin this Fall. In January, the team will place equipment orders, paving the way for full construction and installations over the Summer.

Once open, these rooms become living laboratories. The design team will gather honest, practical feedback from occupants—faculty and students—to actively tweak, improve, and iterate the design before upgrading the next pair of classrooms.

The Best Incentive? Faculty members who step up to collaborate in the design phase this Fall will get first dibs on scheduling and teaching in these state-of-the-art prototype rooms when they debut.

Your Space, Your Voice

Whether you have an anecdote about an exceptional classroom layout you witnessed at another institution, a unique accessibility idea, or a specific layout horror story you want to ensure is never repeated, your perspective is vital.

“The university hasn’t done a great job of soliciting instructor opinions on classroom design, and we want to change that. This is the opportunity for faculty to have an impact on how classrooms are designed and operated at the University of Delaware,” Martin noted.

Involvement is entirely customizable to your schedule. You can sign up for updates or to participate in focus groups this Fall, or simply drop your thoughts into the new digital "suggestion box"—a low-friction online form where you can submit classroom wish-lists or complaints in seconds. Help us build a campus environment that truly works for you and your students.