Kenn Fisher

Place and Space in the Design of New Learning Environments

The development of online and virtual teaching and learning environments to augment formal face-to-face environments raises questions about the way the new communication and information technologies (CITs) are being incorporated into the on-campus environment. More importantly, this development challenges the meaning of the on-campus student learning experience. The new CITs require institutions, teachers and researchers to reconsider the relationship of the physical setting to the student learning experience. This paper highlights examples of recent developments of new learning environments which have been enhanced by the contribution of educational developers at several Australian universities. It also proposes a set of pedagogically informed principles to guide the development of on-campus teaching and learning environments which may feature the use of CITs.

Designing for adaptation: the school as socio-spatial assemblage

Over the last century we have seen a slow transformation of the architecture of school classrooms in response to changing pedagogical theory and practice. A shift from teacher-centred to student-centred learning is accompanied by the move towards a more ‘open’ plan with new spatial types, interconnections and modes of adaptation. This paper seeks to understand this linkage of plans to pedagogies in the case of the middle school. Using an analytic framework of assemblage theory, clusters of learning spaces from a range of recent innovative school plans are analysed in terms of capacity for socio-spatial interconnection and adaptation. Five primary plan types are identified, ranging from the traditional classroom through various degrees of convertibility to permanently open plans. Patterns of spatial structure and segmentarity emerge to enable new forms of teaching and learning on the one hand, but also to camouflage a conservative pedagogy on the other. If traditional classrooms with their corridors and doors can be understood in terms of Foucaultian disciplinary technology, the new learning clusters suggest a use of Deleuzian social theory to understand an architecture of connectivity and flow. Through an analysis that is intended to reveal rather than eliminate ambiguities, architectural capacities for ‘convertibility’ from one pedagogy to another are distinguished from properties of ‘agility’ or ‘fluidity’ that enable continuous adaptation between learning activities. We find that the most popular types have high levels of convertibility and reveal conflicting desires for both discipline and empowerment. We also suggest that the most open of plans, while cheaper to build, are not the most agile or fluid.

Transforming the twenty-first-century campus to enhance the net-generation student learning experience: using evidence-based design to determine what works and why in virtual/physical teaching spaces

The twenty-first century has seen the rapid emergence of wireless broadband and mobile communications devices which are inexorably changing the way people communicate, collaborate, create and transfer knowledge. Yet many higher education campus learning environments were designed and built in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries prior to wireless broadband networks. Now, new learning environments are being re-engineered to meet these emerging technologies with significant challenges to existing pedagogical practices. However, these next generation learning environments (NGLEs) have not been evaluated thoroughly to see if they actually work as they are scaled up across the higher education system. Whilst there have been a range of NGLEs designed globally – with Australia leading in the past five years or so – it is timely that a more rigorous research methodology drawing from health facility evidence-based design is taken to evaluate their effectiveness in improving the student experience and learning outcomes.

Pursuing that Elusive Evidence about what Works in Learning Environment Design

It is an exciting time to be involved in education. Every day we witness the pursuit of innovation and creativity in schools, the sophisticated development of personalized learning approaches, the increasing usefulness of ubiquitous technology, and the excitement surrounding the many ways education can contribute to burgeoning ‘knowledge economies’. These ‘new age’ priorities are combining to enable students to increasingly take responsibility for their own learning and are encouraging teachers to become the curators of learning experiences, that range from whole class didactic encounters, through collaborative peer-peer active learning to reflective one-on-one consultations with students – often within a single lesson.

EMERGING EVALUATION KNOWLEDGE IN NEW GENERATION LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

There is a significant gap in learning environment discourse in connecting graduate attributes to affordances such as space, place, technology and pedagogy. Contemporary journals such as the International Journal of Learning Environments rarely include critical articles on aspects of the physical environment of learning communities (Cleveland & Fisher, 2014).

The Missing Link: Aligning Blended Curricula with Physical Learning Spaces in Health Interprofessional Education

This chapter addresses the topic of aligning physical learning spaces with contemporary curricula in medicine and health professions education on university campuses. It is argued that the design of physical learning spaces is more important than ever at a time of an increased use of virtual learning approaches and a rapidly changing health landscape. The section discusses how to develop an educational building program of new learning spaces and how to repurpose existing spaces. A conceptual framework is based on the four scales—the networked learning landscape model—which was developed to assess existing learning spaces , analyze them in relation to emerging curricula and to design new learning spaces. The networked learning landscape model also enabled the dynamic integration of differing scales, something all to often overlooked in the development of new or repurposed existing learning spaces. The Karolinska Institutet case study provides insights into how educational leaders can take charge of developing physical learning spaces based on the educational theory. It also provides insights into how to work with faculty prior to, during and after a building project; indeed, how to—ultimately—give contemporary curricula an aligned physical expression to improve student learning based on current evidence and theories in education. The overall aim of this chapter is to present a case study which offers a practice-based, research-informed approach of how to ensure that the physical infrastructure of educational organizations supports high-quality learning. Karolinska Institutet and the Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden, are used as a case study on how to develop a building program for repurposing existing, and producing new, physical teaching and learning spaces. This case study is offered as an example of how to develop a process involving academics in lead roles in the teaching and learning space development program in order to better inform the educational purpose of a learning space project and its outcome s (Ellis and Fisher in Adapting to change in university learning space: Informing and being informed by feedback from senior university leaders, 2014). The emphasis is on how the approach and process were developed rather than the actual design and spatial solutions, which will make this case relevant for other sectors outside medical and health professions education. The case study presented here is based on the Future Learning Environment Project between 2009 and 2016. Over an 7-year period, the Future Learning Environment project at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital has been a whole-of-institution endeavor, aimed at providing the best possible learning environment for students, teachers and leaders to meet Karolinska Institutet’s and the Karolinska University Hospital’s aspirations, visions and missions (Karolinska Institutet, 2017a, b). The case study illustrates the use of research outcomes from a variety of sources and sectors in a translational sense for the practice of designing and realizing learning spaces (Ellis and Fisher, in Place -based spaces for networked learning. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 241–255, 2017).

The Emerging Importance of the Affective in Learning Environment Evaluations

This Afterword posits an emerging but critical discourse in learning environments evaluation, suggesting a realm of exploration the editors believe will gain significant traction in coming years. Discussed through the work of Sarah Healy, it takes us into the realm of human environment relations, an area of research that is within the respective realms of the EDRA (the Environmental Design Research Association) and also as evident in the Journal of Environmental Psychology. These both explore the evidence base behind the inhabitation of environments and the affect it has on occupants.

The Translational Design of Learning Environments

The transformation of design thinking through evidence-based design in health facilities planning is based on the medical model of clinical research. These studies ensure that the resultant evidence is sufficiently valid, replicable and double blinded to ensure the safety of a procedure under test for ultimate commercial use with patients. Also known as translational (clinical) research, the method has been adopted and adapted by health facility planners with qualitative and quantitative studies measuring, for example, the rate of healing of patients in different physical environments and in varying therapeutic regimes.

Plans and Pedagogies

The concepts in this chapter were originally presented in the Journal of Architecture in 2013, addressing a design oriented audience. The research findings are included in this book to ensure an educational audience has the opportunity to see the links between pedagogy and space which were encountered in this study.