Next Gen Class

315th Training Squadron students sit in one of the old-style classrooms at the Di Tommaso Hall on Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, June 21, 2017. The 315th TRS is currently in the process of updating its classrooms to foster a better learning environment for students. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Joshua Edwards/Released)

Next Gen Class

U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Stephanie Godsey, 315th Training Squadron instructor supervisor, speaks with students at the Di Tommaso Hall on Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas, June 21, 2017. The classroom featured is one of the next generation classrooms, where groups of two to three students get a television they can share for classwork and a white board to take notes on. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Joshua Edwards/Released)

315th Training Squadron recreates the military classroom

Published July 10, 2017
By Staff Sgt. Joshua Edwards
17th Training Wing Public Affairs

GOODFELLOW AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- The 315th Training Squadron reinvented the layout of their classrooms to try and reach the students in a more impactful way.

The 315th TRS started the next generation classrooms in May and currently has two fully functional area already built.

“A next gen classroom is a classroom designed to better suit millennial students that we have coming into the course,” Tech. Sgt. Stephanie Godsey, 315th TRS instructor supervisor. “This is something we started as instructor cadre. We came together and wanted to help the students.”

The old classrooms had groups of about 10 students clustered together and blocked off from each other with computer monitors. While the new classrooms have groups of two or three students together, with most of the groups sharing their own television screen to share work with the classroom and their own whiteboard for collective group notes.

“The benefit is the students have a better learning environment for collaboration,” said Godsey. “The biggest issues we had in our old classrooms is they didn’t really have a space or anywhere where they could really sit and work together in teams. In the new classrooms that is what they are able to do now.”

Research for the new classroom came from University of Texas and Texas Christian University.

“We sent teams around to other universities in Texas … to see what kind of type of students they are getting now, as opposed to what we used to get 20, 30 years ago,” said Daniel Young, 315th TRS Plans and Programming chief. “We saw that they need more interaction, more face to face time, more student centered learning, more students interacting with each other so that way they could kind of find their way to lessons that we wanted them to internalize.”

With these new changes to the classroom, Godsey said she has noticed a difference in her students.

“I have noticed that the area that they have now and having that TV screen, that they come together as a class a lot quicker,” she said. “They are able to see the big picture a lot quicker.”

With what the 315th TRS has already learned from the first classrooms, they are already in the process of creating two new next generation classrooms.