Back in 2015 Marnie Hughes Warrington (CMM July 9015) reported declining lecture attendance at her ANU.  But big classes are still scheduled so at ANU MHW and colleagues used the current campus-build to custom-create a new space for lectures, a flat “super-floor” for “interactive personalised learning” – for 300 students at a time. It’s a lecture-theatre but with the tiers taken out.

“Our ‘superfloor’ has been a long time in the making. There are few examples of large innovative teaching spaces that are not lecture theatres, and that means it is hard to break from tiers when you are given a blank design sheet.“ DVC  Hughes Warrington explains in a new essay in her series on rebuilding ANU.  But this is what ANU deans and teachers, plus a retired director of Canberra’s schools created, a new form that fulfils an ancient function, in a shape that embraces the advantages of small-group teaching.