Paterson Video 1
Matt Hurtienne
We’re seeing changes in how students in the K-12 system is being taught, and being educated. Teachers in the K-12 system are enhancing their skills and talents to increase activities so their students can be engaged and learn, and they’re moving away from the traditional mindset of education. As we create more classrooms, more active learning classrooms, our goal is to meet the needs of the students coming in from the K-12 system and provide them environments that they’re comfortable learning in. 
Karen Coley
We’re hearing more and more about interactive classrooms, interactive learning, and how the generation coming up is so used to that interactive learning, that that is their learning method. So as a post-secondary institution we need to develop more of that. If we take someone who is used to learning in an interactive way and plop them into a traditional classroom chances are they’re not going to do as well. They’re used to learning interactively, they learn more and they retain more, so all of it has a lot of positive benefits. 
Dan Pahlow
For Matt and I, both of us just had an interest in the topic. Being deans we both wanted to see more engagement in our students and in our classrooms. We knew there was some funding out there for initiatives at the college level and had seen a room similar to this at another local college, it wasn’t really an active room, but it was more of a room where smart technology was used, so we started brainstorming the way that same room format could be used in more of an active format. 
Matt Hurtienne 
The initiative for the active learning classroom started about two years ago where several faculty and several administrators came together and started looking at the best practices for students to learn, help increase student retention, help increase student success, and allow students the opportunity to be actively engaged in a traditional format. 
Dan Pahlow
It’s more experiential so that students are not just sitting and getting, as we like to say, that they are really a part of the process, so a lot of what we have done with the active learning lab really is based a lot on accelerated learning principles. Even concepts like when you walk in that room and you see the color tones and you look at the natural lighting research shows that students who walk into an environment that is pleasant are much more engaged in the learning process from the very beginning. 
Matt Hurtienne
When we were looking at the research and we were looking at the literature of how to start an active learning classroom, what would be the impact to the students and the faculty, we read statements that the first couple of sessions students would be maybe a little bit more timid in the beginning, it’s a change and a change process where they may not be comfortable right off the bat. Most of the students, most of the traditional students, are used to rows and regular seating in the traditional classroom environment. In this environment they are working in small groups, there is less lecture, there is more engagement of the faculty with the students, there is more small group report outs, and once they come to familiarity of this classroom their engagement skyrockets. Just be aware that time is needed for the change process to occur and the acceptance process to occur.