This webcast will explore examples of creating both virtual and physical learning environments that can fuel innovation and collaboration. It will examine the kind of process needed to take a faculty vision for stimulating learning and move it towards a useful physical space that fulfills their goals. There will be a focus on high-quality and efficient ways to deliver learning, and it will offer proven approaches to enhance a learning environment.

Teaching in virtual learning environments can reengage faculty members in their content as well as in their scholarship of teaching and learning. Such engagement is known to enhance the overall learning experience for students. The first part of this program will discuss an emergent virtual learning environment that was co-created with students, and how the students collaborated to achieve their learning goals. We’ll see how a simple, creative combination of blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, Twitter, and an “embedded librarian” empowered student engagement, provided opportunities for just-in-time and active learning, and led to a greater sense of shared academic authority and responsibility. This program will also consider how physical learning spaces might support virtual learning environments more effectively in a blended learning design.

The introduction of new information technologies also requires a fresh look at how learning spaces can help leverage the full advantage of technology, active learning, and collaboration. The program will investigate the University of Southern California’s ongoing initiative to rethink and recreate the physical environment of 220 learning spaces—what should these spaces look like to support the ubiquity of technology, collaboration, and active learning? We’ll examine the principles driving their redesign, the process used, and how they are responding to room flexibility, different learning styles, new technologies, sustainability, the need to maintain room occupancy—all with the reality of limited resources.

Lastly, the program will illustrate a process that can help a college or university move from learning design to an appropriate learning environment. What are the questions that should be asked, and what kind of a process can be used to support the design of learning space that meets the teaching and learning needs for both virtual and face-to-face learning?

NOTE! A single site license includes one link to the live broadcast and 60-day access to an online, on-demand recording of the webcast.

Learning Outcomes

1. Observe how simple, easy-to-use Web 2.0 tools can be combined into a rich and stimulating online learning environment.
2. Discover how physical spaces can stimulate and empower effective blends/hybrids of online and face-to-face learning.
3. Recognize the importance and usefulness of a college or university's vision and strategic plan in any campus or building planning project.
4. Learn by example, how institutions formulate and advance priorities.
5. Identify ways to determine the needs of physical learning spaces based on learning needs.
6. Discuss four principles for managing the change of the physical learning environment.

• Provosts
• Academic leaders/deans
• Faculty
• Architects
• Department heads
• Instructional designers