Learning Spaces
or
Learning Environments
PACAC – Nov. 17, 2006
What might NAU’s Vision become?
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 Spaces
From an address given May 1994
Francis Hunkins, Chair in Curriculum and Instruction
College of Education, University of Washington
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 Spaces
A 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 Mission
From 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.