“I like something where I can be in the middle, circles would be good:
a big circle would be good but squares are what we are made of.” (secondary teacher).
Interaction of People, Learning Spaces and Technology
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in Higher Education... In Schools
At the University of Nottingham we are actively developing a programme of research into learning spaces with other Universitas21 universities.
Universitas 21 is an international network of 21 leading research-intensive universities in thirteen countries. Collectively, its members enrol over 650,000 students, employ over 130,000 staff and have over 2 million alumni. The network's purpose is to facilitate collaboration and cooperation between the member universities and to create opportunities for them on a scale that none of them would be able to achieve operating independently or through traditional bilateral alliances.
The aim to develop new methods and tools to evaluate the contribution technology-supported physical learning spaces make to learning and teaching. This is a broader purpose than post-occupancy evaluation of the design objectives, requiring an understanding of teaching and learning in particular contexts, both formal and informal.
At the LSRI we acknowledge that technologies mediate human action both individually and collectively, and there is currently great interest in learning arrangements that are collaborative, reflecting a perception of the world of work that emphasises communication and teamwork. The design of spaces for learning has been influenced by the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (including the 1994 work of the LSRI’s Charles Crook and Claire O’Malley) and interacts with the interest in social networking among learners in Higher Education, as evidenced, for example, by Facebook and other Web 2.0 applications. Many universities are constructing new technology-supported spaces for student learning, and while research into user requirements has often informed design decisions, and evaluations are being undertaken in some institutions, there is a need to develop tools to investigate the nature of the two-way effects generated in practice between the users and the spaces, and to test the claims made for the improvement of learning.
Several institutions are documenting case studies, mainly focusing on the design outcomes in areas ranging from reception and service areas through learning cafes and social spaces, teaching and vocational spaces to whole learning centres. The Design and Management of Open Plan Technology Rich Learning and Teaching Spaces Study (Watson et al 2007) looked at 24 case studies of large open plan spaces with a variety of study environments.
Roberts and Weaver (2006) specifically looked at evaluating technology-rich spaces from a practitioner perspective, but the student perspective is less well documented. Tom, Voss and Scheetz (2008) in the US used blogs to capture students’ opinion, and in 2007 we commenced surveying students at Nottingham to track their views.
University of Nottingham
The University of Nottingham opened its Hallward Library refurbishment at the beginning of the 2008 academic year, and staff and students have noticed an increase in the uses of the library. In line with good practice, the design process involved consultations with students and staff, and the resulting design aimed to allow students to follow their own preferences, while encouraging group work.
On the entry floor, the idea of ‘adjacency’ guided the location of the expanded café which flows into the library space. At the same time, rules regarding eating, drinking and the use of mobile phones have been relaxed in many parts of the building.
Downstairs, Level 1 accommodates 300 students, with technologies including workstations and laptop PCs, interactive whiteboards, plasma screens, video recording and editing, and video conferencing. The layout consists of five zones, each designed to support a different teaching and learning focus:
Here you see small groups of students on comfortable chairs gathered around movable plasma screens discussing projects, while others line up to use the short-stay computers, or head off to bookable rooms to edit video presentations. We suggest that these spaces have the potential to overturn old paradigms of teaching and learning, as they are designed deliberately for a flexible, student-centred approach. At the same time, library staff develop new roles, which are still emerging as they negotiate the needs of students in the new environment.
A team from Information Services, the CETL for Integrative Learning and the Learning Sciences Research Institute is researching the interaction between people and space in the new developments. We aim to build and test methodologies for post-occupancy evaluation, to compare and contrast the ways the different spaces and technologies are appropriated (owned, accepted, and resisted) by teachers and learners, and to understand the effects of the interaction between people and space on teaching and learning processes. Read more at http://www.hero.ac.uk/uk/inside_he/the_buzz_from_the_hub.cfm
In conjunction with Building schools for the Future (BSF) consultations, we developed a brochure entitled Circling the Square: six activities for listening to teachers and students, which you can download as a pdf.
Elizabeth Hartnell-Young
Learning Sciences Research Institute
elizabeth.hartnell-young@nottingham.ac.uk
