Day 5 - Reflections of the week from the Group

Wrap Up Session

·         Rocky – There is still a tension about movable things compared with fixed. If fixed, we put more technology in but it is expensive to move it!  We have a new building planned and decisions are already made – not sure we are doing the right thing.   The flexibl space at Melbourne – it would be interesting to see how long it would take to de-couple the technology from the furniture.  Teaching spaces – we need to engage with the academics.

·         Irene – Agree with Rocky. Must be a better way to engage stakeholders.  Is what we say practical for my institution – we have to fit in x number of students – our lecture theatres are full. I like the idea of being able to teach from anywhere in the space. Some of our academics will embrace this but many won’t. So many good things to consider for the future.

·         Danny – Spaces we have seen have been representative of their university.  Whether they have done them well or not is not as important. What I took away is that we have to design spaces for our own university. Will be going back and really listening to understand our needs in context.  Acknowledge the different priorities of AV, IT, students.  Drive the spaces based on pedagogy – need to introduce it in to a grad cert program and professional development – early career and established practitioners.  Also introduce it into the students’ thinking. Evaluation – still not clear.  There is a lot of work to do there. Conflict between standardisation and innovation.

·         Melanie – the money being spent on single rooms is more than our annual budget.  Need leadership in property services area.  Need to go back and get support from other areas and I need to influence these people to make a success of spaces.  There is a groundswell in my uni so I’m pushing against an open door.  Big challenge – being able to fund all this.  Locally managed spaces are good but they won’t share so consistency is difficult to achieve.

·         Julie – Though technology may be quite complex, how it used has to be simple. Need to be clear about an informal learning space and a teaching space.  The teaching methodology needs to be adapted before we make radical changes to spaces.  Again, need to fit our budget.

·         Jenni – Agree.  A lot of people made good use of space in general.  We are looking at teaching spaces but we haven’t made good use of outdoor spaces and all the nooks and crannies.  We could make more use of some of these spaces with power and data and comfortable furniture.

·         Carrie – key take-aways: Maintaining focus on students.  No-one takes responsible for the character of the space.  Also slate, blackboard, whiteboard but not much has changed.  Teaching needs to adapt.  Considering a small group and sandpit to experiment. Very inspired, learned a lot.

·         James – new area for me, great to see leaders in integrating technology into spaces.  Nice to see people from different areas working well together towards a common aim.  Need to factor the culture of the organisation into the design. Leadership provides better chance of change/success.  Needs good co-operation.  There will be more subtle use of technology as students bring their own. Key thing – how do you engage with students and academic staff to get the feedback?  Lots of different thoughts and opinions.  Area neglected – the podium.  It would be good to see how to make this more accessible for students.  Existing groups so where do we position ourselves.  What percentage of rooms have a thought process underpinning them?  Furniture expensive, consultants are expensive.  It would be good to provide a collection of good suppliers that people recommend.  Another tour when the spaces are full?

·         Damien – Reinforced to me that good learning space design only happens when all the disciplines are talking to each other (and listening), need to break down silos which is hard but it needs to happen.  From a technical perspective I realise that I get too focussed on technology and I have learned to appreciate that less can be more.  Small technical details have a big impact on the room.  Height of a monitor can spoil the use of a room.  Experimental spaces – it shouldn’t finish with the building of the room – need to revisit and evaluate.  No clear way to measure learning outcomes.

·         Simon – What I took from the tour was a better understanding of the thinking and motivation. Shift to student centric perspective. AV often comes in at the end.  Being in at the beginning and throughout is important to ensure that we do not impose negatively on the end result. Need close working relationships with key stakeholders – timetabling, capital program, IT, AV.  Using software over hardware for switching and VC makes sense so that we can make use of the devices students bring.

·         Lisa M -  Idea of permeability – meeting the indirect needs of the users.  Stop hiding what we are doing (e.g. Melbourne) – seeing into labs etc.  Designing spaces to drive behaviour – is there evidence of this happening?  Ground up approach (we are a ground up approach) but if you want to have real impact there has to be top down approach too to support real changes rather than pockets.

·         Lisa T – Most of it has been said but for me it is the differentiation between teaching spaces and learning spaces. We are spending a lot of time on teaching spaces and we are neglecting informal spaces.  Students spend more time in these sorts of spaces – lets think about these more.  We need to get over the perception that if it can be moved, it will be stolen or damaged – this isn’t true. Treat them like adults. We need champions to lead their peers.  We are all doing the same things slightly differently. We are establishing a CoP from an IT perspective but we need to tap into a similar academic CoP.  Financial sustainability of what we build.  Need to work on a framework to help us manage spaces over time.

·         Geoff – Like the way we divide the spaces, COWS, tiers.  The rooms and feel of the rooms ranged from Vegas to stuffy houses of parliament! Would like to see a Gartner grid of space sizes against technology to develop categories of spaces and appropriate technology.  Disappointed that we didn’t see any strategy for the institutions – it all seemed to be quite ad-hoc. I would have liked to see a strategic view. There are spaces outside of central control but there should be a strategy for all spaces.  Didn’t see much about large touch screens.  Only 1 university looking at surface technology. Interesting to see how they impact spaces.

·         Sarah – The psychology behind how spaces are used was very interesting to me – as children we are taught not to touch walls, or write on them or take things from them and so we should not be surprised that students are constrained by this when we insist on fixing things to walls. Conversely wheels say something different to us – move me, toys have wheels, bikes have wheels, they invoke movement and fun and engagement.  Seems obvious but this was a revelation.  The similarity between the approach to 2 specialist spaces (Sport and Engineering) tells me that whilst one size does not fit all, similar concepts are transferable. Finally, for me the way in which Libraries progress and evolve is a lesson to us and our institutions – they know how to reinvent themselves.  Earlier in the week there was a comparison between classrooms at the turn of the century and classrooms today – very little has changed. But Libraries are so different now to where they were even 5 years ago and there is a consistency in this too globally.  I think Universities should learn from this, I certainly will. 

What Role Do We play now?

-          Developing a framework for evaluating spaces

-          Categories of spaces and technology

o   There are standards for describing spaces. This would be a good starting point.  Interesting statistics  around usage and utility we could tap into.  Before and after measurement.

-          Audit of spaces – very expensive.  CAUDIT perhaps could help with sourcing software to assist us.

-          Consolidation of resources – e.g. benchmarking learning spaces survey, links to other associateions.  Perhaps we can bring together all the resources that we each have access to.  Need a collaborative space – e.g. a WIKI to achieve this.  All to commit to updating. Sarah to follow up with CAUDIT and establish. Sarah to facilitate. Use this to provide links to overlapping groups.

-          Continue the conversation and widen the participation.

Reflections on Day 4 – Victoria and Melbourne

Today was another day of contrast and contradictions.  It has been interesting to see so many different spaces today. The Sports Science spaces at Victoria were, for me, reminiscent of the spaces we saw in the Engineering Precinct in QUT – flexible space, movable furniture and equipment.  This suggests that no matter how specialist the discipline, the space can be made to be flexible.  But, just because it can, does this mean it should?  Certainly some of the thinking behind the spaces at Melbourne that led to decisions to fix furniture and equipment have sound reasoning.  Ensuring quality and longevity of the furniture, providing consistency of layout for incoming staff and students whose expectations may not be met if the furniture were moved out of the space.  This makes sense of course and for many of us in our Universities, this is what we have done for all the right reasons.  However, for me the lure of the flexible space remains exciting. Ultimately though I will need to discuss the options with my colleagues at UWS and in particular understand the intended pedagogy for spaces that we will be developing.

Technology is still often seen as an enhancement and, I feel, this misses opportunities.  Technology can present new ways of teaching and learning and it would be remiss to not consider how technology can facilitate pedagogies in the same way that furniture and spaces can. Yes, too much of it can be overwhelming and detracting but at the same time, technology can liberate teaching if it is used in a way that empowers teachers to do things more creatively.

Different Universities have different drivers which may require different spaces. Historical buildings present constraints that new, modern buildings do not. In some cases, Universities do want to control what the student does and where they sit – a balance needs to be struck between this and total flexibility.

Again, we saw some similar themes at Victoria and Melbourne that we saw earlier in the week:-

·         Pedagogy and intended outcomes should drive design (of space and technology)

·         Consistency of interface continues to be important.  David Cummings said that Learning Spaces should not require an ‘operator manual’ they should be intuitive.

·         Poor engagement of users in design generally leads to dissatisfaction with the space.

·         Technology should not overwhelm the space

·         Keep it simple

·         Glass ‘Whiteboards’ are a common trend across all the spaces and they appeared in new spaces at Melbourne and Victoria

·         There is a need for spaces to be scalable and financially sustainable

Reflections on Day 3 – Queensland University of Technology

Hey what a difference a ‘can do’ attitude can have.  Perhaps I should get out more but I really was excited by what I saw today. Speaking to some of the others on the tour, I wasn’t on my own. QUT have faced some of the same problems and made some of the same mistakes as other Universities but clearly they are getting it right much of the time.  The Engineering Precinct was a terrific example of engaging the academic community, identifying changes to the curriculum and designing spaces to help facilitate that change.  In the UK, I used some of the same principles – engage the academic community, lead with the pedagogy, create designs and repeat across multiple spaces for consistency and this had really good results. However, when I did this, I used fixed technology with inflexible designs – the technology 2.5 years ago couldn’t quite cope with anything else but clearly now it can which presents us with some challenges and opportunities.  One of you (Rocky or Danny?) said, “I need to go back and press the pause button on work we are about to do”.

Some similar themes emerging today again:-

·         Consistency of look and feel makes the spaces easy to use and reduces support overhead.  This makes it easier for academic staff to engage.

·         More examples of flexible spaces – furniture (and even wind tunnels!) on wheels. Talks to the philosophy of ‘don’t bolt things down’

·         Gordon Howell said today “If you put in quality spaces, students will look after them”.  Lori Bowe said the same yesterday. I think this is true and is evidenced by the low levels of theft and damage to what seem to be easy pickings in the flexible spaces we saw today.

·         Evaluation is important. Today, we noted that QUT have a fairly structured, albeit informal way of evaluating spaces, which we as a Community of Practice could develop:-

o   Post occupancy measures

o   Utility measures

o   Satisfaction measures

o   Outcomes based measures (impact on learning) – difficult to measure.  Lightweight feedback – QUT trawl twitter and  use post-it notes in new spaces to get students to put up comments.

·         Whiteboards/writable surfaces. Everywhere we have gone this week, we have seen how important writable surfaces are.  We have considered using glass at UWS and having seen good examples of this in a number of institutions, I think we will give this a go – it seems to work really well.

·         Keep it simple – again, over-doing it over-complicates the space and detracts from its usability. Basic components seem to really work: A bit of technology, a whiteboard, comfy chairs and a table.  Students do their creative thinking on the whiteboards and bring it together on the technology.

What left a lasting impression on me today was....

·         The screens on the walls didn’t get used but the screens on wheels didn’t. QUT weren’t sure why until they discussed this with a psychologist. Things on walls are precious – we are taught this from early childhood – don’t touch the stuff on the walls.  Things on wheels however send a different message – they are toys, they are accessible & you are allowed to play with them. 

·         The Mobile Computer on Wheels (MoCow) which costs about $5,500 and provides a simple, repeatable, scalable set of technology that can be used anywhere.

·         OWL – the web based voting and feedback application.  Makes ‘clicker’ rather unnecessary – turns any web-based device (phone, iPad, laptop) into a clicker and so no need to provide clickers to students. Very simple.

·         Wheels!  I’ve seen tables and chairs on wheels (OK, I get that) but seeing a mobile wind tunnel and other heavy machinery on wheels to enable flexibility in spaces that traditionally are fixed – this made me think again about what is possible.

·         ‘Can do’ attitudes – there seemed to be a more collaborative and experimental attitude in the team at QUT.  There are risks in what they do – Geoff said that they do not require that everything works first time and this changes the emphasis and the approach. It allows mistakes but also greater successes. Someone yesterday said, “It is only a mistake if you do it twice – the first time is just a learning experience”. 

·         A clear link and integration between research and teaching.  We talk about it but it was good to see some real experiences of it in the Engineering spaces.

Link List Updated

All,

Lori sent over links to the library photos from Griffith and also a link to information about the 3rd Learning Commons Development & Design Forum which is being held in Sydney next year.  I have also added a link to the QUT case studies and photos that Geoff referred to today.  When you click on this link, you'll be presented with 2 options - ignore the login option and click on to the red square to see the information and photos.

See the links list to the right for these links.

Reflections on Day 2 - Griffith

It was a full day with staff from Griffith very generous with their time. We saw a number of different spaces including:

Libraries from 2 Campuses

I felt that Lori’s tours were inspiring and entertaining.  I’ve come to the conclusion that our learning space planning sessions would benefit from a Lori!  Her passion and the results of said passion were an inspiration.  I was very impressed with what I saw today. Keeping things flexible has meant that the spaces can be changed later if they don’t work. 

Architecture Space

This was an interesting space with the main teaching space being very open. Lots of flexible furniture with wheels.  Whiteboards floor to ceiling.  Architecture spaces work well for the discipline – highly utilitised.  We liked the movable hanging display screens. Very flexible space. The smaller spaces didn’t seem to work as well.

Engineering Computer Lab

Computer Lab – very traditional layout.  AV was a last minute and the AV facing the front rather than the student.  Line of sight is obstructed by PC monitor.  Jammed in 31 workstations where there should have been no more that 24. No space to get to students.

Mechatronics Lab

Multipurpose lab. Desks are movable. Can be divided into two smaller rooms but mostly used for larger classes.  Portable smartboards available to be wheeled in if AV is needed but otherwise the teaching wall has dry-wipe board. Plenty of storage space.

Student Group Study Room

Simple space with whiteboards and tables/chairs.  Very highly utilised, students like the space. I was surprised to hear how well this room was used because it was so basic.

Electronics Lab

Very poor line of sight.  Too much jammed into the room and too high.  The room was designed without consultation with the people who use the space. Whiteboard positioned too high for people to use. Really useful example of how not to do it.

Some of you said that it really was a contrast from yesterday and I would agree but I also see some common themes emerging. I was interested that people were also commenting about their struggles with architects – where sometimes aesthetics begin to override functionality – so its not just me then!!

Here are the key learning points from today. I’m sure that James will blog more detail so feel free to check out his comments via the link to his blog and I’m grateful for Danny’s photos which are much better than mine (see links to the right):-

·         Don’t bolt things down if you can help it.

·         Spaces don’t work well if users haven’t been involved in the design.

·         Holistic design is so important – tagging technology on at the end doesn’t work.

·         Cramming too much in makes the space overwhelming.

·         Do the spaces work? – again no formal evaluation but Lori does her own informal evaluation.

o   Migration of students and furniture changes in session

·         It is easy to lose the aims of the requirements as projects progress because...

o   Senior leaders over-ride user’s requirements

o   Users engage late or not at all (or are not invited to sometimes)

o   Space gets swapped out for other reasons

o   Small tweaks add up to a large variations

·         Flexible spaces seem like a really useful approach

o   Some practical considerations – someone has to re-jig the spaces in flexible spaces.

·         Consistency of interface design for teaching technology has also been a theme at Griffith.  Major investment in resolving this has resulted in improved satisfaction and reduction in support calls.

Reflections on Day 1 - University of Queensland

It has been an interesting day – UQ had some very different spaces to show us. I particularly liked the Advanced Concept Teaching Space.  I appreciated Luke Angel’s candour in telling us what worked and what didn’t.  I made a note of your comments throughout the day and summarise here the key learning points from today:-

·         The model for teaching and learning space design looks the same now as it did 100 years ago.  Very little else in the world has resisted change quite so much.

·         The best way to engage staff in new designs is to identify programs that are already targeted for redesign for some other reason.

·         Too much technology can be terrifying!

·         Innovation can be very expensive and it is difficult to ascertain whether there is a good ROI

·         A framework for evaluating spaces needs to be developed

o   A national framework would be better for benchmarking

o   How do we assess the impact of spaces on student learning as part of the evaluation of the space?

·         Innovative things can be simple changes to existing formats (changing the design of a raked lecture theatre to allow students to turn round and collaborate with others)

·         Exciting spaces can be a great marketing tool but the ‘window of wow’, as Lisa put it, is growing rapidly shorter.

·         Consistency of user interfaces is very important – academic staff find it difficult to move from 1 set up to a completely different setup

·         Getting the engagement from a key group of academics is essential for ensuring that the space is well utilised

·         Radical new approaches to space design need a corresponding change in curriculum (e.g. the new UQ engineering building is using active learning spaces and this is being supported by a new approach to teaching)

·         Be very careful what you build into the walls!  Consider more carefully how you can enable people to bring their own technology with them