The Design & Management of Learning Environments Conference 2017 #LECONF

Conference venue: Kings Place, London.

The Design & Management of Learning Environments Conference attracts a friendly and loyal audience of directors and managers from HE Estates departments, designers, architects, academics and consultants.

This year the event ran on 28th June and showcased a wide variety of speakers, from architets to change managers through to educational technologists.

The day was opened by Mike Clark chair of AUDE, Director of Estate and Facilities Management at the University of Brighton.  He suggested that a new role had emerged within universities, that of a programme manager physical learning spaces, sounds promising.

 

 

Niamh Godley & Holly Sorce. “The Transition to Bush House: Change management and academic offices”

King’s College London

 

James Rutherford. “The UK HE Learning Space Toolkit”

City, University of London

I spoke about the Learnign Spaces Toolkit, a collaboration between SCHOMS, UCISA and AUDE. Two excellent international resources inspired the creation of the Toolkit. The first was the audio visual design guidelines from the Association for Audio Visual and Education Technology Management (AETM), Australia, and the second, FLEXspace which is an open access repository populated with examples of learning space images and related information from institutions worldwide.

Learning space developments whether new build or refurbishment, are complex projects that tend to happen infrequently and represent a substantial financial investment with a significant lifespan. No one professional group has enough knowledge to make the best decisions alone. This Toolkit is intended to help professionals to work more effectively together and with other stakeholders to deliver outcomes that have a significant transformative effect for their institutions.

• Design decisions should be guided by a set of educational principles and articulating these principles clearly and simply will aid dialogue and understanding between different stakeholders involved in a learning space project.
• We need to design for a diversity of pedagogic approaches bearing in mind a strong prevailing tendency towards a socio-constructivist approach that emphasises participatory and collaborative activities wherever appropriate.
• We should think about entire campuses as learning spaces and consider the seamless flow of different types of learning activity as well as the overall range of provision.

Learning is above all a social process. The physical environment of a university should create a sense of being part of a learning community. A well designed campus allows seamless integration between different types of learning activity: between formal and informal learning and between group and individual learning.And we must always consider diversity and inclusivity for our learners.

This Toolkit has a focus on helping those in Estates, IT and audio visual support to work effectively together – but a successful project will need to involve a much wider range of stakeholders.

A strong desire to meet deadlines and manage a tight budget may encourage project leaders to want to get on with the build and solve any outstanding issues later. I would highlight the importance of ensuring that stakeholder voices especially academics, students and support staff are heard and acted upon from the beginning of the project if costly mistakes are to be avoided. Project teams should be aiming for highly participatory approaches to stakeholder engagement rather than token information giving.

Learning Space designers should be looking to stimulate creative thinking if we are to go beyond simply recreating new versions of what we already have. There are many simple approaches that can be used effectively to help stakeholders understand each other’s viewpoints and to work collectively to make better decisions.

“Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up. Taking more time at the outset in forming the design brief and focusing on what the activities are can lead to a much better set of outcomes.” – my quote.

Typically the elements of a learning space project will consist of the RIBA stages, which apply to any large scale project. University staff will be likely to find themselves working with a wide range of professional advisers, which can be complex and drawn out over months and often years.

Frequently we are trying to do something that has not been done before and the experience of most other types of build are far better established than some of the more experimental learning spaces that we are developing. Frameworks and models undoubtedly help but only to the extent that they must not constrain thinking about what is unique about each particular project. The Toolkit advises on the use of a structured methodology but it is one that gives a holistic view. With all learning spaces it is fundamentally important to understand the activities that will be going on, in order to determine the room design and functional specification. It may be either innovative or low tech but it needs to be appropriate for the learning activities taking place. Usability and comfort is a key design principle for all learning spaces.

As learning and teaching practice develops we should not necessarily be constrained by the assumption that all spaces used for teaching should have a defined front and we need to understand the implications of new types of collaborative learning for those supplying audio visual technology and other teaching facilities.

Evaluation is an integral part of any learning space development and should be considered from the outset of any project. Indeed, Post-occupancy evaluation is well established within the higher education estates management function and AUDE has collaborated on producing guidance published by HEFCE (2006) But the danger is that we sometimes use the old measures to determine new spaces and as a result we often find them wanting…

• We need to be able to evaluate the learning taking place as well as more readily quantifiable measures of usage of the space and technology.
• We need to develop measures of success that relate to the activities and behaviours of students and how they communicate and collaborate within the space.
• We need to use a range of qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods.
• We need to ensure the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders including learners.

If we accept that learning space projects are change projects then there needs to be careful consideration of how we can measure the success of such space.

Quantitative data is relatively easy to gather these days but really needs to be supplemented by observational and behavioural analysis to gain any real insights into student and tutor practices in new learning spaces, such as ethnographic studies for example.

We must ensure that educational technologies are appropriate for the types of learning going on in the space; that the user interfaces are simple and intuitive and that lecturers are supported in making effective use of technology.

• Lecture capture for example – lecture capture makes possible interesting new developments such as the concept of the flipped classroom whereby a tutor makes the lecture recording available for students to view in advance so that the class time can be used in interactive discussion about material with which students should already be familiar.
• Hi tech – Voting systems, such as the Poll Everywhere app for mobile devices, and before that clickers for audience response in lectures.
• Low tech – some of the equipment that best supports collaboration in learning spaces does not have to be complex. Writable surfaces in learning spaces are highly conducive to collaboration, participation and active learning, something I discovered in my own research study a few years ago, with whiteboards and glass writing surfaces being highly rated by all users.

We shouldn’t underestimate the time and resources that need to go into change management activities;

An Estates project manager with a background in construction won’t necessarily be a specialist in change management: they will need expert support. Effective change is collaborative but it needs to be led. Senior management leadership and support should be robust and visible.

There is also a significant amount of research into change management that identifies transition as distinct from change and suggests that it is often the pain of transition rather than the actual change itself that people tend to resist. I find you even need counselling skills as a lot of time is spent giving reassurance and walking people through change.Academic staff are sometimes very uncomfortable about moving away from didactic delivery in class, they don’t always have the skills required to deliver in new ways in our more progressive spaces.

One idea I have found to be highly effective is horizon scanning or bench marking. Ideally you want to take representative academics on visits to see how other universities are doing things differently (although seeing what other people get wrong is useful as well). Sharing best practice with other academics is very important and something that most staff are familiar with and they do seem to find it helpful.

The rationale for phase 2 is to bring the toolkit to life with recent case studies to provide an evidence base to underpin good practice and to demonstrate the experience of the range of professionals required to contribute to a successful learning space project.

Many will be familiar with AUDE, UCISA and SCHOMS,who are the current collaborators. Phase 2 will also involve colleagues from the Higher Education Design Quality Forum, its aim is to advance higher education through high-quality design and planning of buildings and facilities, along with SCONUL The Society of College, National and University Libraries which represents all university libraries in the UK and Ireland. We also welcome the Heads of E-Learning Forum along with JISC, which is the UK higher, further education and skills sectors’ not-for-profit organisation for digital services and solutions.

Phase 2 will be focusing on four categories of space, from traditional lecture theatres to collaborative spaces, study lounges, as well as more specialist spaces.These are the different parameters that phase 2 will feature, some new, such as a closer look at pedagogy, informal learning, and budgets as well as some re- applied from the original Toolkit.

The methodology is very interesting for phase 2, with a different focus for its investigation, and with challenging questions with a greater emphasis on strategic learning and teaching objectives and an investigation into pedagogic led approaches.

These questions build on the knowledge and experience of developing the original Toolkit, and I think demonstrate a greater sense of confidence in asking the right questions. A recognition that it is the academic intent and vision that should be equally important as the pragmatic need to refurbish and refresh the university estate. The following is an update from Eleanor Magennis, one of the lead collaborators representing AUDE;

• Shortlisted case studies, institutions informed
• Researcher appointed
• Survey issued late July/early August
• Site visits arranged
• JISC on board and will host new toolkit
• Additional funding from HEDQF and SCONOL
• Publication date to be confirmed

 

Maria Nesdale was the afternoon chair, an architect from Genser.