Want to create teams in your class but are unsure how to help them find one another in the classroom? Try a seating chart! Seating chart diagrams illustrate the classroom that you are in and have groups of chairs labeled with team numbers.
It’s difficult, though, to find an image of a bird’s eye view of your classroom, so when I started teaching several years ago, I made my own. I went to the classroom before the semester started and recorded how many rows, how many seats in each row on either side of the aisles, and any spacing between rows. I used that information to build a model of the classroom in PowerPoint, using tiny squares to represent each chair. Then, I overlayed larger, numbered squares on top of four tiny squares to represent where student teams would sit in the room. Bam! I had a seating chart diagram in PowerPoint.
I created teams on CATME, listed all the team members for each team in the PowerPoint (about 5 teams per slide next to the seating chart), and then shared that PowerPoint on D2L before class. I also presented it during class. Students either came into the room knowing their team number or watched the PowerPoint scroll through the team lists (which were either next to or below the seating chart). It usually took students about 5 to 10 minutes after class began to get settled into their new spots. A few students needed help finding each other but were typically fine coming up to someone already seated and just confirming with them that they were the same team number.
I created seating charts for several rooms across campus and am sharing them in the PowerPoint below. You might be lucky and are using one of the rooms that I have used. Otherwise, take the one that most closely represents your classroom and edit the “chairs” as needed by moving, deleting, or copying and pasting the squares to make more chairs and rows. The first few slides in the PowerPoint provide more details on how to edit your seating chart.
I hope you find this tool useful in promoting teamwork in your courses!
Seating Chart Presentations.pptx (Make sure that you are logged into your MSU account to access it. You will have view-only privileges so download it to your computer or OneDrive.)