The Best Seat in the House? Student Learning and Classroom Seating Patterns

I teach most of my classes in a shoebox--one that's about 150 feet long and half as wide! Nearly 300 students crammed into that shoebox, by the way. Students in the back row are not only sitting 150 feet away from me, but because the classroom is tiered upward, they are one floor above me!! From the teaching station it's impossible to describe in any detail those sitting in the back rows. Common sense would suggest there are implications for teaching and learning.

I know that students are advised to "sit toward the front" to increase their learning, but obviously not everyone can sit in the first few rows. Too many students and not enought rows. Learners with vision or hearing problems are likely to want to sit toward the front. Other students know from experience that sitting toward the front gets them higher grades. What of the others?

Most instructors have a gut feeling about seating patterns and grades. Students who sit toward the front are usually the better students and students who sit toward the back are usually the ones with the lowest grades. Is there empirical evidence to prove this gut feeling? If anyone knows of a paper on the subject, please leave a comment. If the paper is available online, I'll go back and provide a link to it in this posting. I'd like to know if there is cause and effect or self selection. Does sitting in the back cause less learning to occur or do students with less ability choose to sit in the back?

I'll bet I could really shake up some students by choosing one student every class period from the back rows and inviting that student to come down and sit in the first or second row. Would that be too mean?