Studio A studio is a workspace in which students pursue individual tasks while the instructor circulates among them for private dyadic conversation. Many studios also have an underlying web pattern of informal student-student interaction, usually determined by physical proximity. Studio behavior can occur in very brief episodes, as when a discussion leader walks into an audience to speak directly with a student, or to direct a pair of students to role-play an issue in the discussion. Clusters As small-group learning becomes more common, learning spaces are asked to allow students in a large group to divide into smaller clusters to work informally together in multiple unmoderated webs. Separated Participants in mid-career education and training are familiar with the breakout pattern in which a large group is separated into smaller ones that adjourn to private spaces.
Communication is starwise with the larger audience, webwise inside the small group.
Intermittent conventions Several of the patterns listed above can be frequently interleaved in time, sometimes imposing more complex demands on the room design. For example, cluster studio periods during a single class session may alternate with short lectures or moderated discussion involving the whole group. Moderated group discussions may be punctuated with an extended holding of the floor for a mini-lecture by a member or the instructor, including presentations that may be quite formal and rehearsed, with exhibits, etc. The size of the class using a space is only distantly related to the kinds of teaching described above. Group size becomes important for design in web forms, because the students have to be able to see each other easily, especially when the numbers demand more than one row of seats.