Learning Landscapes

Learning City

• Effective designs for university buildings are driven by ideas with intellectual substance. University buildings on urban campuses are most effective when they connect to the history of the host city.
• Experimentation and innovation is best facilitated by committee structures that promote creative and critical thinking.
• A culture promoting innovation and experimentation in the teaching, learning environment can be established by developing a common language for shared understanding. This can be done through internal conferences, imagineering events, workshops and projects that promote engagement and involvement with key stakeholders and groups.
• The engagement with students is key, but students need training and support to be effective in their role. Chairs of committees need training in facilitating student involvement in committee meetings.
• Estates should understand there is no ‘standard issue academic’, and enable academics to express their ideas spatially through offering what is possible rather than prescriptive models.

Read the case study

connecting teaching and research

• The most effective teaching and learning spaces are based on approaches to pedagogy that are clear and convincing: in this case connecting research and teaching in the undergraduate curriculum.
• Creative thinking is not something that happens only outside of committee structures, indeed university committees are important places to influence and affect change.
• Relations between academics and estates work well when each understands each others role, with academics taking the lead and where estates are committed to the provision of efficient and effective spaces for teaching and learning.
• The problem of managing different cultures is not restricted to academics and other university professionals, but includes possible tensions across subject areas and, as in this case, between different universities.

Read the case study

Beyond the Service Model

• Buildings do not run themselves: teaching and learning spaces require effective operational and management support.
• Estates need to extend their role beyond that of being service providers for academics. They can do this by finding ways to better understand the teaching and learning experience of students within their HEIs, through surveys and other forms of recognisance.
• Clarity of leadership needs to be established from the outset, within a clear set of guidelines as to responsibilities relating to specific roles. This clearness of vision and how it is to be achieved needs to be set within a context in which the ambitions of a project are realisable and realistic.
• Students complain about a lot of things – but rarely about space: yet it is important to include them in the consultation and evaluation process.

Read the case study

Iconic and iconoclastic

• Iconic and iconoclastic teaching and learning spaces provide very clear messages about the commitment of a university to teaching and learning.
• The involvement of students in the supervision of teaching and learning spaces creates a sense of ownership and commitment to a space, as well as providing sound base for space evaluation.
• Academics can be encouraged to experiment with teaching spaces by exposure to the innovative practices of their colleagues.
• Credible academic leadership is important in driving the agenda for the progressive development of teaching and learning spaces.
• Ways can be found to facilitate the relationship between academics, estates and other key stakeholder through a greater awareness of each others preoccupations.
• Be ambitious. Creative thinking about building design in initial stages need not be constrained by budgets. Ideas can be rationalised once budget limits have been set.

Read the case study

Go Between Leadership

• Progressive relationships between academics and estates can be facilitated by ‘go-between’ leadership roles, where a senior manager acts as liaison between academics, estates client groups and design professionals.
• New teaching and learning spaces based on progressive designs can act as catalysts and inspiration for further innovation, as well as providing an important learning experience to support further design projects.
• Crucial to the development of the design brief is that client groups have a significant amount of time to work through the issues associated with creating new teaching and learning spaces.
• It is important to disseminate learning across the sector through the HEFCE, the HEA and the subject centre network as well as other regional, national and international events.
• Effective teaching practice and the spaces within which progressive teaching takes place does not have to be funky or radical.

Read the case study

Spatial Deconstruction

• Real innovation deconstructs the way in which academics and other key stakeholder think about spaces and the ways in which these spaces may be used, enabling these space to grow organically beyond the initial brief.
• Teaching and Learning spaces should be teacher -centred as well student- centred, i.e., designed in ways that academics feel supported and involved.
• Evaluation should include effectiveness as well as efficiency.Evaluation needs to go beyond space utilisation to include a review of what academics are attempting to achieve in the space.
• Credible professional expertise is key: often acting as a ‘go-between’ for academics and estates, so as to maintain the original vision of the space and drive it forward without undermining the original vision.
• The vision for experimental spaces needs to be articulated in ways that are clear enough to enable buy in from different stakeholders. This vision should be articulated through a common language and a shared vocabulary.
• Teaching and Learning Spaces need to be embedded in already existing university structures, e.g., library provision, student union, school and department structures to generate a greater sense of ownership by academics and students.

Read the case study

Research based design

• New learning space projects should be aligned with a university’s key strategic planning. The S@il spaces support the university’s commitment to creating an inspiring research based culture, that includes research in the undergraduate curriculum.
• Committee structures need to be created that generate the opportunities for creative and informed discussion and decision making.
• Spaces designed to facilitate creativity and social learning can themselves be used to develop thinking about new ideas in relation to teaching and learning spaces.
• A common language and common understandings in relation to teaching and learning space can be developed by ensuring that university documentation is well designed, accessible and easy to read.
• Decision making about designs for teaching and learning spaces should be informed by research, evaluations and be evidence based.
• Ways to facilitate the relationships between academics and estates can be developed, for example ‘walk arounds’: situational discussions between academics, estates and other key stakeholders, including students on what work best in terms of the design of pedagogical places.
• The student voice is key, but universities have not yet found the best way to engage effectively with students on matters to do with the provision of teaching and learning spaces.

Read the case study

Supporting teaching and learning

• Academic staff need support and mentoring when developing their pedagogic practice, as well as an inspirational space in which to practice.
• Conventional committee structures and management procedures are not helpful in designing innovation into teaching and learning spaces.
• HEIs need to provide a programme of formal planning that supports strategic experimentation. This programme needs to be based on a free flowing process, as well as projects that are derived out of more central planning protocols.
• Service departments, and particularly the Library and other learning resource providers, can act as catalysts within institutions.
• Teaching and learning space are most effective when seen is part of a network of spaces on campus, each fulfilling different tasks linked to a progressive pedagogical agenda.
• The development of successful professional relationships can be built up over time and by working on a range of projects.
• Evaluation should be ongoing and accessbile,e.g., online, to inform an evidence base for learning space design. However, it is difficult to assess the value of new spaces in objective terms, e.g., the ways in which innovative teaching spaces affect student grades.

Read the case study

Problem based learning

• Effective design for teaching and learning spaces should be driven by sound pedagogical principles, based on experience, research and evaluation.
• Progressive design development for teaching and learning spaces is facilitated by flat management structures, providing decision making processes that empower academic staff to experiment and innovate.
• Academic leadership at a senior level is required so that projects are connected to the University estates strategy while at the same time driven by academic imperatives and are not estates led.
• Significant client involvement is required working alongside architects from an early stage to support and challenge academics not used to working on building projects.
• Learning from experience is formalised through evaluations. It is important that evaluations reflect the activities that are actually taking place in the space. The student voice is key to the process of evaluation.

Read the case study

classroom without walls

• Committee structures, no matter how well aligned with strategic planning, can impede decision making. Systems may need to be set up outside of mainstream committees to drive forward innovation and experimentation.
• Buildings are influential and can act as change management tools, to transform the way in which a university approaches teaching and learning – not just a building project.
• New designs need to stretch conventional thinking: genuine innovations can take teaching and learning forward.
• Staff need support and development in how to use innovative teaching and learning spaces, particularly when the designs are genuinely radical.

Read the case study

Building spaces creatively

• The most compelling buildings articulate the mission and ambition of the university, and the way in which that mission connects with the needs and capacities of its host city.
• The most effective teaching and learning spaces are designed around approaches to pedagogy that are clear and convincing: in this case collaboration between staff and students.
• Effective decision making requires streamlined committee structures, and the avoidance of policy being created by informal conversations. The memberships of committees is key, as are the abilities of committee chairs to move agendas forward.
• Effective professional working relationships between academics and estates can be engendered through the establishment of formal working groups which include operational and technical staff as well as teachers and researchers.
• The process of consultation between the architect and the client group is crucial so as to invoke a sense of ownership for a project, foster creative thinking and to generate aspirations beyond the individual experiences of the staff involved.

Read the case study