Context This project will develop a set of core principles that institutions can use to help them design, construct and develop new learning and teaching spaces. Increasingly, quality assurance in higher education is expanding to include a wide range of aspects of university life that includes buildings and the environment. The physical space of universities has often focused on the activities of learning and teaching. This project would provide a framework for institutions to work within to ensure that they make best use of their resources. Objectives The aim of the project is to develop a set of comprehensive design principles that institutions can draw on to inform the development of new learning spaces. The project aim will be achieved by addressing the following objectives: - To identify the meaning of 'innovative learning and teaching' in different contexts across Europe; - To identify existing policy and practice towards learning and teaching space and related issues across EU and national HE sectors; - To identify policy and practice towards learning and teaching space and related issues in other national HE sectors; - To explore practice and principles in building and developing space in other sectors; - To explore the extent to which QA includes the built environment; - To identify existing practice and principles across the partnership institutions; - To share practice and examples across the partnership; - To highlight examples of good practice in design and development of learning and teaching space. Number and profile of participants The partnership will include six institutions from diverse regions of the EHEA and be a small, manageable partnership of institutions which have some notable experience in building and developing learning and teaching spaces. However, it is important that the partnership includes institutions with a variety of experiences as well as engaging different regions, reflecting the huge variations in learning and teaching traditions. Description of activities The principal output of the project will be a set of core principles that institutions can use to help them to design new learning and teaching spaces, whether developing existing buildings or constructing new spaces. This output would need to be built upon two core sets of data: wider, national explorations of policy and practice followed by a series of case studies that explore the issues facing universities in building new learning and teaching spaces, determining what works and what does not work and highlighting good practice. Methodology to be used The project will take a pragmatic approach, where each stage of the project is informed by the previous stage. This approach has proved successful in several of our previous EU-funded projects and is logical for the proposed project. The first stage of the project would be to undertake a set of studies to identify policy and practice across national higher education sectors. The second stage of the project would be to focus on the partner institutions and explore what activity is currently in process, what approaches are taken to building new learning and teaching spaces and stakeholder perceptions of the space available to them. These two stages of work would inform the core output of this project, the basic principles of constructing learning and teaching spaces. The resulting output will be piloted and evaluated. Results The key tangible result of this project will be a manual to inform university design to facilitate innovative learning and teaching spaces. Other results will be data relating to the extent and development of innovative learning and teaching space within the EHEA. Impact The main impact of the project would be to encourage wider consideration of how the design of learning spaces contributes to the implementation of innovative and effective learning and teaching practice across the EHEA. Potential longer term benefits The project will share good practice in facilitating innovative learning and teaching, taking account of the rapid acceleration of technological innovation and how this is driving L&T and student engagement. This could also include relatively new developments such as how learning analytics is contributing to a greater understanding of how learners use resources. In other words, design of learning spaces has to take into account technological development and changes in L&T delivery as well as responding to student engagement evidenced through data collection.
The aim of the project was to develop a set of comprehensive design principles that institutions can draw on to inform the development of new learning spaces. The project aim was achieved by addressing the following objectives: - we identified the meaning of 'innovative learning and teaching' in different contexts across Europe; - we mapped existing policy and practice towards learning and teaching space and related issues across EU and national HE sectors; - we mapped policy and practice towards learning and teaching space and related issues in other national HE sectors; - we explored practice and principles in building and developing space in other sectors; - we explored the extent to which QA includes the built environment; - we identified existing practice and principles across the partnership institutions; - we shared practice and examples across the partnership; - we highlighted examples of good practice in design and development of learning and teaching space.
In this project, we sought to identify a set of core principles that institutions can use to help them design, construct and develop new learning and teaching spaces. It was necessary because in recent years, institutions have been engaged in substantial building programmes but largely at the individual institutional level, often seemingly without reference to wider principles of design of learning and teaching space. Indeed, the construction of new sites is based on a wide variety of assumptions about the nature of learning and teaching and often seem to be unrelated to the real needs of innovative teaching. This project therefore helps to provide a framework for institutions to work within to ensure that they make best use of their resources. This framework is based on a set of principles allowing stakeholders to refer to a shared view and common language with respect to the requirements for proper design of teaching and learning spaces. The main achievement of the project has been to encourage wider consideration of how the design of learning spaces contributes to the implementation of innovative and effective learning and teaching practice across the EHEA.