Four important questions must be answered before lab space can be designed. What do you want your students to know and be able to do? How should they learn? What teaching and support facilities will be required? What are the school’s priorities, and how do the desired changes fit within them?

To begin to explore a variety of teaching space layouts, click on the appropriate button below to access an interactive planning tool.

A. What do you want your students to know and be able to do?

• Does your school have a mission statement that identifies overall goals?

  
  
  

• Have you and your science, math, and technology education colleagues written mission statements for your programs? Are they consistent with the school’s mission?

• What is the nature of your curriculum and what changes do you foresee?

B. How should they learn?

• Will an interdisciplinary teaching approach be implemented in your school?

• To what extent will your students be involved in individual or in group experimentation and problem solving?
  
  
  

• Will students participate in individual or group projects?

• Have you and your colleagues discussed new teaching methods for science, math, and technology education?
  
  
  

• How will science, math, or technology education be taught in your school ten years from now? The same as today, or differently? What may be the differences?

• How will technology be integrated into the curriculum and into the laboratory?

• How will computers be integrated into the curriculum and into the laboratory?

C. What teaching and support facilities will be required?

• What discipline or disciplines will be taught in the space?

• Will fume hoods be critical to your curriculum or will your program, by policy, limit the use of certain chemicals and experiments to eliminate the need for hoods and waste disposal?

• Will desktop or laptop computers be used? How many students will share one computer?

• Will lab space be shared or will each teacher be assigned his or her lab?
  
  
  

• Should a discussion area be provided in each lab? If so, what seating style should be used?
  
  
  

• Should the seating be around chalkboard or a seminar table? Should tablet arm chairs, chair desks, or movable tables and chairs be used?

• If the labs are shared, will each teacher need special support space? What other support space will be required for your program?

• In addition to the general purpose, discipline-specific labs, what other teaching space will be required?

D. What are your school’s priorities?

• Does your school offer courses in science, math, and technology education? If not, is augmenting the curriculum a high priority?

• Are the science, math, and technology education departments expected to either expand or decrease? Is any one area expected to change more than another?

• Are these departments involved with other academic departments in interdisciplinary teaching? Will such initiatives be encouraged in the future?

• Does your school sponsor academic programs that involve the community or local industry? How does this affect the science, math, and technology education curriculum?

• Does you school share resources with another school?

• Is you school planning any new construction or renovation? How will this affect science, math, and technology education facilities?

E. MAGNA Awards

• Award-winning creative approaches applied and tested in the real world.

The next step in the planning process is to form a Planning Committee.