Learning Space Design and Presentations/Speeches

The San José State University Academic Success Center opened in October 2006 with a goal to increase student success by providing 21st-century technology, informal and formal learning spaces, and the services and support. The objective was to build an integrative center that provides students with an innovative space and technology tools for collaboration and promotes faculty pedagogical innovation through the use of our Incubator Classroom, winner of the 2007 Campus Technology Innovators Award. By combining physical space, technology tools, and an intensive professional development program, the ASC exemplifies a new synergistic model for the campus. Now SJSU has turned its focus to creating an assessment program to help guide the next phase of the project. Join us to discuss the challenges and opportunities in assessing learning spaces and making a connection to student outcomes. We will outline the SJSU assessment program and discuss and share the instruments we have used.

An important goal of all learning space design is to make students and faculty successful in the practice of learning. The shift in focus from just classrooms to the more inclusive concept of learning spaces is at least five years old. Much has changed in our thinking about how to design spaces for learning, and today we face a new set of design challenges (for example, furniture selection and whether to use mature or emerging technology). Amid such considerations, it's important not to lose sight of two core issues: how people learn, and the practices we employ to foster learning. In this session we will review constructivist learning theory and its impact on learning space design. We will also look at how learning space design must be informed by learning practices, and how these practices need to both shape and evolve with all our design efforts.

Demands for flexibility, collaborative learning opportunities, and access to digital information are resulting in a new design paradigm for learning space that transcends academic disciplines. Concurrently, technology enables the development of highly specific and realistic simulation environments for education, business, the health sciences, and other disciplines. Maturing technologies such as wired and wireless networks, low-cost projectors, flat-panel displays, and productivity software are integral components of a traditional modern-day educational facility. New and emerging technologies such as collaboration software, personal broadband networks, virtual environments, and 3D displays are creating opportunities to rethink the learning space-what and where it is-and what happens inside it. This session will explore developments in technology, classroom design, and concepts for future facilities and their transformative impact on the teaching and learning process.

For a decade, research libraries have increasingly turned their attention to the learning needs of undergraduates, best depicted in the emergence and evolution of collaborative spaces referred to as learning commons. These successful spaces and the programs they support are inspiring libraries to take a fresh look at the needs of graduate students and faculty. The most innovative expressions of support for students and faculty spring from insight provided by user studies, deep engagement with constituents, and helpful collaborations. In this session we will review emerging library trends in support of learning and research, and their impact on learning space design. Some of the more promising assessment techniques that are helping to inform this work will be reviewed.

Imagine designing a learning space where physics is not a barrier, or where weather, terrain, and daylight can be controlled. How about being able to change a learning space into something completely different with a mouse click? This session will look at the "Mildly Wild West" that is virtual environments.

Cosponsored by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), EDUCAUSE, and the University of Central Florida (UCF), the Students, Technology and Learning: Strategies for Success Conference (formerly the Key to Competitiveness) provides AASCU institutions with an opportunity to learn more about the next generation of students—a group with much greater expectations for the use of technology in higher education than previous generations. The event allows teams of presidents and senior institutional leaders to explore new ways of using technology to meet student expectations and more effectively serve the next generation learner.

We will discuss the academic and IT perspectives on a collaborative project to transform an abandoned swimming pool into a "sandbox classroom," where faculty and students are encouraged to approach teaching and learning with an adventurous and curious spirit. The driving design goal for this experimental, interactive classroom was flexibility to allow room configuration changes and integration of new or unexplored technology in support of different teaching and learning styles.

Come learn about innovative work being done in the Midwest region at this brisk, lively showcase of five-minute presentations from ten of your peer institutions. Time will be allotted for Q&A, and informal interest groups may be formed on the spot at the end of the session.

This session will present the planning, use, and assessment of our first flexible technology-enhanced classroom or learning "studio"—an immediately useful yet also provocative and experimental space. We will show how the completed space itself challenged our faculty and students to redefine what learning at UMSL could mean.

This session will use the InfoCommons at Northwestern Library as a case study to examine a very successful partnership in technology application and space planning between two high-profile campus entities.