Fast Company magazine has a section devoted to the intersection of design and business. In it, Jack L. Robbins writes about Active Design. Here is, also, the Wikipedia article on Active Living by Design.

Given the size of the nation's obesity problem, intentionally integrating active design elements into every campus facilities and landscape planning process - especially in areas of student services, housing, pedestrian circulation, and so forth - seems a no-brainer. We've seen campuses to things that align with this philosophy, although unintentionally, or for other reasons. If you know of campus planning that has incorporated this in an integrated fashion, please share information about it in the comments, below, or in SCUP's LinkedIn group. Thanks.

Here's more from the Fact Company article:

Environments that are unwalkable are boring, feel vast and scaleless, and present blank unvaried views. Contrast a vast parking lot with a lively café-lined street and it’s clear what makes an environment walkable.

Variety and stimulation is especially important for the young digerati who have grown up in a wired world that brings a universe of entertainment and social interaction to them through a screen and a keyboard.

To motivate the under-25 crowd to use their legs—instead of their thumbs—to explore the world, the real world must compete with the digital one in terms of stimulation. Dense, multi-use urban environments with a variety of offerings can provide the stimulating surroundings that encourage walking and real-life social interaction.

Very little about the American classroom has changed since Laura Ingalls sat in one more than a century ago. In her school, children sat in a rectangular room at rows of desks, a teacher up front. At most American schools, they still do.

Slate magazine's got a contest going on until the end of October. It is asking people to describe or design the ideal fifth-grade classroom for today, This article describes the contest and spends some time critizing the failure to markedly change classroom design.

Education has changed even if the room has not, and if you go into most schools, you are likely to see teachers and students chafing against the rectangle. The 21st-century imperative is to closely monitor students’ individual progress and teach them accordingly. Teachers are supposed to work together to analyze data and coordinate their approaches. Most classes include at least some traditional instruction: one teacher up front, addressing 20 or 30 students. But it is also common for students to work on projects in small groups, for aides to conduct "interventions" with a few kids around a table, and for teachers to assess children one at a time. Where the space has not been modified accordingly--which is to say, most everywhere--you see lots of kids sprawling on cold tile floors and huddling in converted closets. Why haven’t schools evolved the way museums and playgrounds and supermarkets have? 

According to this author - Benedict Carey, The New York Times - a number of things we tend to believe about learning are ... wrong; here's what's correct:

• Studying the same material in different spaces yields better learning than always studying it in the same place.
• Studying a variety of things in each study session yields better results than focusing on a single type of learning.
• Repetitive study sessions space out over time are more fruitful than mass cramming.
• Testing is far more valuable as a learning tool than as a mere assessment measure for grading purposes.

The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard.

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Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding. “When students see a list of problems, all of the same kind, they know the strategy to use before they even read the problem,” said Dr. Rohrer. “That’s like riding a bike with training wheels.” With mixed practice, he added, “each problem is different from the last one, which means kids must learn how to choose the appropriate procedure — just like they had to do on the test.”

If you just happen to be hoping that no one ever brings you into a discussion where your ignorance about "cloud computing" can be ascertained, we've got the resource for you: Cloud Computing Explained. It's the lead article, by Rosalyn Metz, in a themed issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly that is wholly devoted to cloud computing issues, trends, and challenges. Read it and be ready for any discussion.

Key Takeways listed for this item include:

 

• The NIST definition of cloud computing is concise and uses industry-standard terms.
• Exploring the five characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models for the cloud in the NIST definition clarifies cloud concepts.
• Examples of cloud-based technologies explained in this article promote a better understanding of the cloud.
• The more informed IT departments are about the cloud, the better their position when making decisions about deploying, developing, and maintaining systems in the cloud.

 

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

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Here's your SCUP Link to the initial source for 'Screened' Out: Display Screens as Functional or Aesthetic Design Elements.

Sometime back in the 1990s, I made a case for screens—video monitors, computer displays—as the architectural ornament of our time. As Notre Dame has gargoyles, we have our screen-size talking heads. For this, I apologize. I’ve now decided that it’s time for the age of the ubiquitous screen to be over. 

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My evidence for this is thin; screens big and small are still proliferating. But I’ve had a series of conversations with interior designers about what the future might look like, and most of them downplayed technology’s role in their aesthetic. Words like authentic and homelike have replaced wired or smart. And I take it as a good sign that in New York, the gathering places for a new generation of digital entrepreneurs are self-consciously creaky: the new Breslin at the Ace Hotel, the old NoHo hangout Tom & Jerry’s, “a place so low tech you can’t even run up a credit card tab,” as Susan Dominus writes in the New York Times. 

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Oddly, it was a recent visit to MIT that suggested that this might be more than wishful thinking on my part, that perhaps the technological project we embarked on in 1990s, the relocation of all our transactions and interactions to screens, is pretty much over. 

 

Related: A preconference workshop at SCUP–44, July 18–22: The Evolving Library: Supporting New Pedagogies, Learning Preferences, and Technologies.

Related: A preconference workshop at SCUP–44, July 18–22: Linking Theory and Practice: Shaping Spaces for 21st Century Learners.

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Following a "learning spaces" theme in EDUCAUSE Review which we already shared with you in a previous set of SCUP Links, EDUCAUSE has assembled yet another great set of articles about learning spaces in its current (and first online-only) issue. SCUP staffer Phyllis T.H. Grummon, contributed an article titled Best Practices in Learning Space Design: Engaging Users." Her Key Takeaways:

Engaging those who will use a learning space in its planning yields the greatest benefits, yet the people who manage a space usually determine its design"; "[f]ormal and informal surveys of space use provide data that inform design according to the location and intended purpose of a specific space"; and "[s]urvey results from the Society for College and University Planning and Herman Miller showed that respondents believe users should be key drivers in learning space design.