Learning Resources

Abstract: How can buildings be both flexible and concrete? It’s a contradiction in terms and a huge challenge facing university planners and facility managers as they try to keep up with rapid changes in technology, curriculum, teaching techniques, and student demographics. This article explores some of these trends in education and how construction techniques are evolving to meet the need for reconfigurable spaces.

Abstract: Do you have facility needs, like the need for more/improved space for instruction or infrastructure upgrades? Is it time to address deferred maintenance issues? Do you have reservations about venturing into unfamiliar territory? You’ll have to wrestle with some vexing matters—plan alternatives, big budgets, illusive funding sources, and an uninformed public.
Your concerns are valid. With a rich background as architectural firm principal and later as a community college project manager, the author has been through the drill. This article’s thoughtful advice details a project’s first phases—from initial concepts to developed projects with funding. It will head you toward success by helping to avoid the pitfalls.

Abstract: Makerspaces designed for collaborative learning are appearing on campuses throughout the United States, including at Drexel University. These spaces succeed because they permit students to collaborate, observe, and learn from professors and peers. Unique to the Drexel project is the intermingling of engineering undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and commercial interests in one facility with laboratories, machine-shop equipment, and informal study areas. Facilities that give students great visibility into nearby research, contain areas where they can take breaks without leaving the building, and lend themselves to informal encounters with peers, faculty, and others result in better academic experiences for undergraduates.

Abstract: The thickening and expanding digital layer of our world has prompted us to reevaluate how we navigate through it and also what, why, where, when, and how we read the things within it. In an institutional setting, reading for learning and research is no longer confined to the printed page or the campus; this has led to a hubbub by those who fear an embrace of digital technologies will in some way diminish students culturally, intellectually, creatively, and emotionally. Sorting through the hubbub, there is reason to be optimistic as examples abound of how the digital layer enhances learning and knowledge creation. Institutions have an important role here: they have the heft to help drive innovative practices, policies, technologies, materials, and spaces for reading now and tomorrow in this hybrid physical-digital information landscape.

Abstract: As efforts to stimulate innovation spring up across campuses, institutions need a comprehensive planning framework for the integrated planning of initiatives that support innovation. The campus can be viewed as an Innovation Landscape, and settings for collaborative creative activity—both physical and virtual—can infuse the campus fabric and become part of the daily experience of users. The Innovation Landscape Framework is a tool to help coordinate physical planning with organizational initiatives, engage a wide range of stakeholders, and enable a more widespread culture of innovation.

Abstract: Transdisciplinary learning is the next frontier in higher education. Our innovation economy is applying tremendous pressure on all types of organizations to innovate and re-innovate at increasing speed. Transdisciplinarity requires us to engage and co-depend on others to co-identify humanity’s challenges and co-investigate and co-implement solutions in integrated and collaborative processes. To adapt and succeed, higher education needs to shift to a transdisciplinary mind-set model of learning in new environments. The Transdisciplinary Atelier is a concept for understanding space as a facilitator of disciplinary integration that can be used by all universities and colleges whether in new or existing buildings.

Abstract: “Designing Innovative Campuses For Tomorrow’s Students” explores increasing investment by higher education institutions in new programs and facilities that boost on-campus innovation and entrepreneurship. This trend is a response, in part, to the changing expectations and demands of Millennial and Generation Z students and their future employers. The impact of this movement, though, goes far beyond those constituencies—changing everything from campus housing to the economic development role of higher education institutions. The examples of Clemson University’s Watt Family Innovation Center and the University of Florida’s Infinity Hall are provided to illustrate the scope of influence and success of these changes.

Abstract: The forms and layouts of classrooms reflect the societies and economies that students will face when they graduate. As happened in the previous two industrial revolutions, classrooms today need to respond to an emerging “third industrial revolution,” with its demand for innovation and creativity and its provision of information on demand. Active learning classrooms represent a transition to a future in which most learning will no longer happen in what we call a “classroom” today. Instead, students and teachers will be able to move to a variety of spaces, on demand, in order to accommodate different kinds of intelligences and pedagogies.

Abstract: This report was produced by the researcher awarded the M. Perry Chapman Prize for 2014–2015.

While face-to-face collaboration has been theorized to be a key element in intellectual development and cognition, no formal method of quantitative measurement has been applied to understand collective face-to-face learning in academic institutions or how patterns of interaction and individual reflection may reveal information exchange among students within educational institutions. To address this gap, this study introduces a novel tool and framework to promote the systematic study of peer collaboration for general use in education.

Results of this applied research will be useful to architects, interior designers, librarians, educators, and researchers interested in obtaining empirical evidence and applying it to the design of learning environments and the assessment of how well spaces intentionally relate to learning. This research project introduces a common means for researchers in space design, education, and information science to develop principles and best practices to improve return on investment in the design of informal learning environments.

Abstract: Recently, education researchers have emphasized the redesign of learning spaces to better accommodate pedagogical change. In particular, studies have found evidence of the relationship between the built environment and learning outcomes—however, no current studies have deliberately focused on the “minority majority” feature of America’s future student composition.

This pilot study was conducted to evaluate how space contributes to the learning outcomes of a demographically diverse class of students at Morgan State University, a Historically Black Institution. Based on the neurobiological literature on environmental enrichment, the authors hypothesized that an enriched learning environment will correlate with increased student activity (directed movement) and engagement (with other students, with room features) and result in significantly improved learning outcomes for an ethnically diverse student group.