Learning Resources

Abstract: FLEXSpace—The Flexible Learning Environments eXchange—and the Learning Space Rating System (LSRS) are tools that can help you plan, design, assess, and improve learning spaces on your campus. In this session, you will learn about the newly released FLEXspace 2.0 along with the LSRS. We'll cover the features and benefits of both tools and how they can be incorporated into the planning process. Come learn how to use these tools to inform designs and support end users from planning through post occupancy.

Abstract: There is no shortage of hype and technobabble around the promise of shiny new technology trends and their prospect for disrupting the universe as we know it. Twenty-five years ago, the World Wide Web and the underlying Internet did, indeed, change everything. Today the promise of AI, ML, IoT, XR, NGNs and the latest alphabet soup of tech trends promises to impact the campus in all its facets. This session will provide context, insights, and some prognostication on how the campus planning community should embrace its technology future through a ‘trust but verify’ lens.

Abstract: Higher education institutions, across nearly all socio-cultural cross-sections, are more diverse today than ever before. This evolution in campus demographics also coincides with the changing values, priorities, and needs of students. The bottom line for many of today’s students is clear: now more than ever, values matter when selecting a school. This article explores the programmatic and administrative responses as well as the physical planning and design opportunities associated with creating and sustaining more diverse and inclusive campus environments.

Abstract: From demographics and social change to politics and technology, many trends impact planning in higher education. SCUP’s Trends for Higher Education is designed to help you and your institution make sense of the most significant evolutionary forces.

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: 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.