Learning Spacesor

Learning Environments

PACAC – Nov. 17, 2006

It appears to me that as we contemplate the design of future schools, of future facilities that will encourage educational renewal and restructuring, that we perhaps are too timid, unaware of the shackles of our hidden assumptions and suppositions to what a school is and what is defined as a learning space.

we need to do more than restructure the schools; we need to reinvent our schools. We need to engage in outrageous thinking about learning environments.

Perhaps we should not think of schools as primarily places for learning, but rather as arenas where individuals engage in knowledge construction.

Currently, there is much talk about educational reform. But, while we are talking of reforming our curriculum, reforming our instruction, reforming our actions with schools, we are not reforming, reconceptualizing, the spaces into which our reformed curricula and necessary pedagogical and professional actions are to occur.

Reinventing Learning SpacesFrom an address given May 1994

Francis Hunkins, Chair in Curriculum and Instruction

College of Education, University of Washington

What might NAU’s Vision become?

Goals for this meeting

• Environmental scan

• Overview of current project plans w/background

• Goals of a project PACAC might take on

• Scope of the project

Learning SpacesA New EDUCAUSE e-Book

D. Oblinger, Editor

• Space as a Change Agent• Challenging Traditional Assumptions and Rethinking Learning

Spaces• Seriously Cool Places: The Future of Learning-Centered Built

Environments• Community: The Hidden Context for Learning• Student Practices and Their Impact on Learning Spaces• The Psychology of Learning Environments• Linking the Information Commons to Learning• Navigating Toward the Next-Generation Computer Lab• Trends in Learning Space Design• Human-Centered Design Guidelines• Designing Blended Learning Space to the Student Experience• Sustaining and Supporting Learning Spaces• Assessing Learning Spaces• Learning How to See

Project MissionFrom Denison University

Guiding Principles

• Learning spaces should support a diversity of learning styles.

• Learning spaces must be versatile.

• Learning spaces must be comfortable and attractive.

• Learning spaces are information rich and technologically reliable.

• Learning spaces must be maintained continuously.

• Learning spaces should be ubiquitous in space and time.

• Learning spaces should be used effectively.

• Sufficient resources must be allocated for learning spaces.