Draft:Create a seating chart
Create a seating chart when assigning seats in your learning space. Retain the chart for your records and consider making it available online for students to consult. Seating charts can be helpful when tracking the location of a student in the classroom is necessary (e.g., for contact tracing purposes).
Class rosters
All of these methods will benefit from having a class roster on hand when you create your seating chart. This will allow you to identify students in class more easily (e.g., as they state their names). It will also help you determine who will need to be added to the seating chart later because they are absent from the class meeting.
Paper-and-pencil options
Here are some quick paper-and-pencil options:
- Sketch a representation of your classroom on a piece of paper. During class, ask your students to state their names and write the name in the corresponding location on your sketch. Please note that passing the paper around the room and asking students to enter their names themselves is not recommended under the current conditions brought on by the pandemic.
- During class, give each student a sticky note or ask them to take out a piece of paper. Ask students to write their name on the sticky note or paper and leave it at their seat as they leave class. Give yourself enough time to go around the room after dismissing class and transfer the name to your paper seating chart. If you need sticky notes, contact TLT (tlt@winona.edu).
Technology-enabled options
If you want to get fancy, here are some technology-enabled options:
Take a picture of your classroom
Use your phone to take a picture of your empty classroom to help you create a seating chart. Do not take a picture of your students sitting in class unless you have consent from your students to do so. For more information about the legalities of capturing your students on camera, contact Legal Affairs.
Use Word or PowerPoint
- Add a table to a Word document with a number of rows and columns corresponding to the seats in your classroom.
- Use the Seating Chart PowerPoint template. This is a pre-built PowerPoint presentation that includes shapes you can use to create a representation of your classroom on a blank PowerPoint slide. Download the template here. Open it to open PowerPoint and create a presentation using the template. This will work better for smaller learning spaces. Contact TLT (tlt@winona.edu) with questions or if you would like us to create a representation of your classroom for you using this template. We already have slides for Somsen Auditorium, SLC 120, and Miller Auditorium (Stark 103).
- Either bring the file to a class meeting and fill in students' names yourself or you can post the file to your OneDrive, share it with the class, and ask students to enter their names themselves using their laptops or phones. If you are sharing the seating chart file with your class for the purpose of filling it in, follow these instructions.
- Contact TLT (tlt@winona.edu) for help creating a template for your classroom. We have already created templates for our large spaces that we would be happy to share and we will create custom templates to order.
Use the Brightspace Seating Chart Tool
The Seating Chart tool in Brightspace allows you to open a preconfigured map of your classroom and drag-and-drop students from your class list into the seats on the map. The seating chart can be saved for future reference or attached to class meetings and events in the Calendar. There is more information available in the Brightspace Seating Charts wiki article.
Forms and Qualtrics
Create a quick online survey to gather seating information from students. Contact TLT (tlt@winona.edu) for assistance. We can help you set this up and learn how to use it smoothly during classtime.
More wiki articles
External links
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