SCALE-UP is a learning environment specifically created to facilitate active, collaborative learning in a studio-like setting. Some people think the rooms look more like restaurants than classrooms. The spaces are carefully designed to facilitate interactions between teams of students who work on short, interesting tasks. A decade of research indicates significant improvements in learning. The approach taken during the development and testing of the learning environment is an application of scientific teaching

Scientific teaching

Scientific teaching is a pedagogical approach used in undergraduate science classrooms whereby teaching and learning is approached with the same rigor as science itself....

 and has been discussed in several books. Although originating at NC State University, nearly 100 colleges across the US and around the world have directly adopted the SCALE-UP model and adapted it to their particular needs.
The SCALE-UP name stands for “Student-Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs.” The basic idea is that students are given something interesting to investigate. While they work in teams on these "tangibles" (hands-on measurements or observations) and "ponderables" (interesting, complex problems), the instructor is free to roam around the classroom–--asking questions, sending one team to help another, or asking why someone else got a different answer. There is no separate lab class and most of the "lectures" are actually class-wide discussions. The groups are carefully structured and give students many opportunities to interact. Three teams (labelled a, b, and c) sit at each round table and have white boards nearby. Each team has a laptop in case they need web access. The original design called for 11 tables of nine students, but many schools have smaller classes while a few have even larger ones.

SCALE-UP Adopters

The main SCALE-UP website has information from about 50 of the known adopters of this pedagogical approach.

SCALE-UP classes are being taught in college-level physics, mathematics, computer science, chemistry, engineering, biology, nursing, business management, astronomy, and even literature. There are also high school courses that utilize this general pedagogy

Non-SCALE-UP Studios

Beyond the studio

Studio

A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...

-based instruction that is commonly seen for art and dance classes, several universities have developed their own studio-based classrooms independently from the SCALE-UP project. (The well-known TEAL classrooms at MIT are SCALE-UP adaptations.) The Workshop Physics Project at Dickinson College

Dickinson College

Dickinson College is a private, residential liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally established as a Grammar School in 1773, Dickinson was chartered September 9, 1783, five days after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, making it the first college to be founded in the newly...

 produced some of the earliest studio-based science instruction. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Stephen Van Rensselaer established the Rensselaer School on November 5, 1824 with a letter to the Rev. Dr. Samuel Blatchford, in which van Rensselaer asked Blatchford to serve as the first president. Within the letter he set down several orders of business. He appointed Amos Eaton as the school's...

 probably offers more college-level studio courses than anyone else. UC-Davis has been teaching physics in a studio classroom for several years.