Today we’d like to introduce you to Jane Zhang.
Jane, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
One of my deepest learning experiences was during my sophomore year at McGill. The school administration had just shut down a beloved student-run cafe in the Architecture department. In response, the Students’ Society launched a campus-wide case competition for student teams to design a new cafe.
I teamed up with an engineer, a fellow environmental scientist, and an aspiring nutritionist, embarking on a five-month journey to develop a business plan, architectural design, and food menu for this student cafe. I fell in love with entrepreneurship and the fast-paced, interdisciplinary learning that came with the journey. As an added bonus, our team won first place and got to see our concept implemented the following year!
After college, I worked in urban planning and wanted to hone my design skills, so I enrolled in a MOOC. I realized quickly that consuming videos did not suffice. While the MOOC was good at teaching theory, the course lacked two essential elements of design education: peer learning and project work. I was trying to learn a hands-on skill, without the critical elements of people to do it with and a project to work on.
In 2015, I enrolled in a Masters program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where I started dreaming up an idea for a “WeWork for students.” I took this idea to a hackathon for education, where I met my collaborator, a middle school science teacher who moved her classroom furniture every day to better engage her students.
We bonded over the importance of physical environments in the learning process and recognized a gap in design literacy among teachers. Many teachers used Pinterest to scour for classroom design ideas, but they didn’t get any insight into how or why these hacks were effective or suitable for their classroom.
Thus the idea for room2learn was born: a web platform for educators to share and find classroom layouts and space hacks to enhance learning.
We are the first EdTech company to focus on physical learning environments. Working with an incredible team of designers, educators, and software engineers, we have helped redesign learning environments in Boston Public Schools, independent schools across New England, and Lake Tahoe Community College.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
One of the first challenges we faced was an education gap on the part of teachers. While some teachers were well aware of the impact that design has on learning, the concept was (and still is) new for many educators.
Schools began reaching out to us, requesting in-person help with space redesign and teacher training. Responding to this interest, we shifted our focus offline. In the process of designing a STEAM Studio (STEM + Arts) and redesigning a TV and Media Department wing, we learned about the long and complex design process in schools and the importance of planning before designing.
Over the past 2.5 years, room2learn has straddled between an online platform and in-person design consultancy. Since we started with a social mission as opposed to a specific teaching problem, we’ve had to iterate through multiple business models to test how our platform creates value in the niche of school design. We have learned to combine best practices from the worlds of EdTech, architecture and construction, and software businesses.
Today, we are taking all of this learning to hone the platform into a standalone tool to help educators design and plan learning spaces.
Please tell us about room2learn.
When you hear the word “classroom,” you probably picture a room of students in rows facing a teacher and a blackboard. The blackboard might have changed into a whiteboard, but this overall layout hasn’t changed for over 150 years.
Unfortunately, this traditional approach to education has failed to stay apace of the needs of today’s workplaces, where creative thinking and strong collaboration skills are paramount. These skills are hard to teach when every student is staring at the back of someone’s head; the clunky desks and chairs are becoming a hindrance to learning.
To date, I’m most proud of bringing over 3,000 teachers and designers from around the world into a conversation about learning spaces. In the process, we have managed to grow the largest crowdsourced database of classroom designs.
Currently, room2learn offers a freemium platform where teachers can sign up for a free membership to browse and find design resources based on their teaching and learning needs, and connect with fellow educators. We’ve curated hundreds of room layouts and classroom products to support today’s learning needs.
In addition, we license the platform to school districts to bring teacher and student voice into the facility planning process. Teachers upload pictures and videos of learning in their classroom and share the challenges they face. From there, we collate all this data for districts and architecture teams to plan and design optimal facilities for learning.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I grew up in Vancouver, BC, nestled in between forests, mountains, and the Pacific Ocean. For all the time that I spend working indoors with people, I still recharge by finding time to be outside. As a kid, one of my favorite evening activities was to climb the tree in our backyard.
I would climb up into my nook and spend hours playing with the ants — watching them bustle around, directing traffic with my hands, and imagining stories about their little ant lives. I would tune out rest of the world, and imagine a parallel universe with my tiny friends.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2 Avenue de Lafayette, Boston, MA 02111
- Website: https://room2learn.org
- Email: team@room2learn.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/room2learn/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/room2learn
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/HackClassrooms
- Other: https://medium.com/room2learn
Image Credit:
Mark Pan, Dave Rackley, Bonnie Larosa
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