Poll for educators: seating charts or not?

I have only taught at community college and university level, and I have heard of some profs using seating charts in their classes but I could never figure out why. Is there some logic to this?

The way I figure it, if the students are attending, I’ll recognize their names and faces soon enough, and I take roll anyway because I have to. It doesn’t matter to me where they sit as long as their attendance is regular.

We had assigned seating sometimes back in K-12, but I don’t remember any of my college profs assigning us certain seats.

I’d like to get a survey on this.

Not.

Some of the schools I’ve taught at required attendance (for financial aid purposes), but like you, I just call the roll each time until I finally figure out who’s who (then I can just mark it off at the beginning of class).

But a chart? Most students go to the same seat anyway, giving you de facto permanent seating, so there’s no point in assigning seats.

When I was lecturing to large classes I would have seating charts. In that way I could respond to specific individuals by name rather than, “The young man in the third row with the loosely fitting sweatshirt could you tell me…”

I could instead look at the seating chart and say, “Mr. Johnson, what is your response to this?”

When teaching seminars or small classes, I did not keep seating charts although at times I felt I should. I am notoriously bad with names.

I just graduated, but a friend of mine is taking some Master’s classes. She has one with assigned seats and she Hates that professor. (For many reasons, that being a small one.)

As a student, I would think not. It feels disrespectful. I’d rather people didn’t know my name over having assigned seats. College students are not first graders and treating them more like adults is a good goal.

The only exception I can think of would be some large exam - seating charts are a control measure and its appropriate to control exam space.

Our TA uses a seating chart for our tutorials, but only for attendance purposes. He knows all of us by now. :slight_smile:

I never had assigned seating at the university level, but I think for those large classes that all seemed to have some componant of required class participation, I sure would have liked to know I was getting credit for that participation, not someone else.

While I was a student teacher, my co-op told me to always have seating charts. He said to never voluntaraly give up tools available. It is always possible to loosen up on a class, it is near impossible to tighten down.

Now, as a substitute teacher, I love seating charts. I find the classes that have them are generaly better behaved to start with, and I can call students by name right from the start. The fact the kids know I know who they are, just avoids problems.

I’m graduating in May and have never had assigned seats in college classes. Assigned lab bench space yes, but that was to prevent people from stealing each other’s glass kits any worse than we did. Although I do tend to gravitate to the same seats each class, the middle of the front row. Partly because I like sitting in the front, but mostly due to my poor eyesight that wasn’t corrected completely until the set of glasses I have now.

I did have one prof big on small group discussion, where we sat near the others in our group, but that seemed to be more practical than anything else.

In high school, I can only remember a scant few classes without them. Before, alphabetic order since I switched out of a uber liberal school at the end of 3rd grade.

Being a student currently. i can tell you that students pick the place they are going to sit for the entire semester. On the first day, call roll, and they will most definetely be there, or close to there the next time. I don’t know why, but that is the way we do it…I am sure you did it the same way…just…remember!

I teach high school, and I use seating charts, both to minimize cheating and because I play a lot of games with a running score between different teams, and the teams (which I assign in order to balence them) are reflected in the seating chart.

However, neither of these reasons would be appropriate in a college class, except perhaps during a test.

I do seem to remember I had some professors who asked the class to stay in more or less the seats they started in, as this facilitates learning names.

Just how do seating charts work? Are you handed a chart before the 1st class and required to sit there? Do you mark your name down after the 1st class and then hold that seat permenantly for the rest of the semester? Are you allowed to put in a request for transfer?

I teach 6th grade math, and I don’t use a seating chart at all. As other posters have said, students will naturally pick thier own seats and stay there for the majority of the term.

I normally have all of the students in my classes tell me thier first name only on the first day of class and I try to remember them using a mnemonic device of some sorts.

Good luck

I’ve taught college graduates computer programming in COBOL (yes, it was a long time ago!).
We had a seating plan, simply so we could get on with the course. (Since programming jobs were well-paid, the students were motivated too!)

In school and in technical college, I didn’t use seating plans. Learning names depends on how many students in the class, and how good the teacher’s visual memory is.

Our School takes photos of students for their ID cards. I sometimes print a whole class out and pin it above my computer to help me learn their names.

If you don’t do it already, don’t bother. I hated having a seating chart in a 300 person class. I usually like to sit somewhere different, you get a different perspective on things, or you get away from those idiots who just won’t shut up.

Last time I had an assigned seat was my hellish senior (HS) english teacher.

The funny thing is, I was in a 2-year program junior-senior years. Almost all the classes ran, continously, for two years, but due to internal politics, they switched out our english teacher on us for the second year. On the first day of senior year, a really odd thing happened: We all walked into class, and sat down in the same exact places we’d sat in all through junior year.

So, yeah. most people will keep in their same seats regardless. I personally hate people who flutter from seat to seat, a different place every. single. class…

I taught for seven years at a military academy prep school. I usually had three classes with 20-30 students per class. I never had assigned seating.

On the first day of class, I took attendance, and did my best to learn how to pronounce my students’ names. I then asked for a volunteer from the class to take attendance thereafter. Being a military school, I always got one. The volunteer got a nice title: “section leader.”

As time went on, my school set up a nice Access database with all of the students, including a photo. This made it easy to learn names/faces.