One of the choices that students at California State University, Stanislaus (Stan State) make early in a class is the placement of where they want to sit which is usually the same place they will sit throughout the semester.
The reason why students would choose to do this is because of familiarity.
“I think most obvious reason for that is it provides a sense of certainty and routine in an environment” Dr. Keith Nainby (Professor, Communication Studies, Research in Pedagogy) said about why students choose the same seats for a duration of a semester. “If you’re a learner, if you’re a novice and you’re just trying to get your understanding of a subject, where you’re being held accountable for something as serious as a grade in a course, the more things you can do in your control I think the better”.
Students have varied reasons on why they choose their designated seat in the classroom.
Veronica Medina (junior, Liberal Studies) likes to sit where she is the best capable to learn.
“I usually [sit] in the front because it is easier to hear the teacher, and sometimes they have small handwriting so it’s easier to see it”, said Medina about her seating placement.
“I sit in the middle, in the middle, both column-wise and rows-wise”, James Dean Gibson (junior, English) said on where he sits in a small classroom. “[However], in a bigger auditorium I tend to sit like in the third row because if [I] sit too far back I’ll fall asleep because sleeping is one of my main things”.
There has been benfits of sitting in the front of the class rather than the back of the class.
According to an article written by USA Today, the closer you are to the front the more likely a student will build a relationship with their professor.
“Research suggests very strongly that if you sit, depending on the size of the classroom and location of the seats, but usually you would want to sit 20 to 30 percent deep into the class” Dr. Nainby said on the best place to sit in a classroom.
He also adds where the worst places to sit in a classroom are in the form of a cross.
“Usually the benefit to GPA happens most often across a spectrum where it’s almost like an inverted cross, where you think about the stripe where it’s like 20 to 30 percent away from the front of the classroom,” Dr. Nainby states. “If you think of that as a crossbar, and the middle of the classroom, the students who do the least well in relating to the instructor and in terms of succeeding in the class are the people who are right in the front to the extreme left or extreme right of the instructor and then toward the back and in the other side It’s obviously because of things like eye contact”.
Gibson states that there an unspoken rule about seating placements when the semester is underway between students.
“I mean they’re not formally assigned, but after a few weeks there is an unwritten law that ‘you don’t sit there I sit there’, and when someone breaks that you feel kind of offended,” Gibson said.
Dr. Nainby encourages students to diversify where a where they sit.
“One of the things I would encourage [students] to do, I try to this myself as a teacher, would [to] encourage [them] to move around a bit and sit in different places,” Dr Nainby said. “I think where you are in the classroom physically can change how you learn, and I think meeting new people can change how you learn”.
