Campus Technology Magazine’s May 2013 edition has an article on Designing Collaborative Spaces from an architect’s perspective. There are some very good insights here on designing both formal and informal spaces.
[PDF Version of article]
-LKH
Tag Archives: higher ed
Looking For Ghost Stories
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Fall is in the air, and as we all try to ignore the red & green holiday decor that is already on the shelves in some stores, I do have a holiday in the front of my mind — Halloween. It’s such a fun holiday. I mean, you get candy from strangers and get to dress up in silly outfits. Awesome. So when one of the dates for the Informal Group on Learning Spaces meetings came on October 25th, I knew it needed to be a fun Halloween-inspired meeting. I wish I could have everyone come to the meeting for a costume contest, but it’s just a few days too early for that. So, the next best thing? Making a Haunted Building tour of the campus! I am really excited about it. That is, until I realized I don’t really know many ghost stories about campus hauntings. Whoops. This is going to be harder than I thought.
Thankfully, the fabulous group of people that gather for the Learning Spaces meetings are at my rescue. At this morning’s meeting, I already gathered the back stories on 2 different haunted locations. There’s half our tour! š I still need to hear about some other haunted campus locations, so if you’ve got the story, comment here! We’ll visit the haunting and have a good storyteller share the tale. Too bad we can’t do the tour at night and do some amateur ghost hunting. You know, capturing EVPs with the sophisticated lecture capture equipment in the classrooms and borrowing thermal scanners from a lab to look for heat signatures, etc, etc . . . I am sure this sort of investigating would really help us move our classrooms into the future. We might get some good advice. Ha ha.
So, the schedule for our fall meetings is online on our Informal Group on Learning Spaces page, so check there for all that info. Contact Leslie Hammersmith if you want to be added to a calendar invite and get reminder emails. I want to take up some of this post to share with you some of the great ideas that came up for some future meetings. I tell you, this group has some of the best ideas that keep our meetings from becoming stale and boring. I think my favorite idea came from Peter Mortensen, who said, “I think every semester should have a hard hat tour!” Inspired by the number of capital improvement projects going on (that means new buildings for you non-administrative types), someone offered to give the group a tour of a building before it is finished. I already have my next series of “fun” tours to plan with the added bonus that now I can come up with a logo for the Informal Group to put on our personalized hard hats. Yeah. Right.
Some of the other ideas for future meetings included talking about Outdoor Learning (informal learning spaces in the “field”), finding and using Swing Spaces (those temporary classrooms and offices when buildings are under construction), learning more about how our classrooms are scheduled and utilized, and updates on classroom governance and surveys.
Hope to see you this semester!
The Lincoln Hall Tour
Last week the Informal Group on Learning Spaces got the chance to tour the newly renovated Lincoln Hall. Some really amazing restoration work and incredible engineering that reclaimed previously unusable space makes the building even more remarkable. I’m still getting over that the general assignment classrooms are equipped with chalkboards and not a whiteboard to be seen. However, a private tour the next day of some of the department-managed classrooms in Lincoln Hall reassured me that we do have variety in our learning spaces and we are seeing innovative uses of technology in our teaching environments. Phew.
The Informal Group on Learning Spaces checks out one of the newly renovated classrooms in Lincoln Hall.
Interested in joining in next time? Check out the Informal Group on Learning SpacesĀ meeting schedule, or read our 2011-2012 annual report summary.
Spring 2012 Meetings of the Informal Group on Learning Spaces
We are excited to share the schedule of meetings for the informal group on learning spaces! We have varied experiences planned for the semester, including discussions about the future of learning spaces, tours of our favorite campus places, a Special Tour of the “ugliest” places on our campus nominated by our group members, and collecting examples of average and exceptional spaces at our peer institutions. Check out the schedule below and mark your calendar. And remember, meeting notes and other details are available on the Reports page for the Informal Group on Learning Spaces.
Spring 2012 Topic Schedule:
- Feb 9: Re-Introductions and Setting Topics [Meeting Notes] [Study Compiled for Vet Med on Collaborative Learning Spaces]
- Feb 23: Doris Reeser and her student Al Ochsner will present information they compiled about general assignment classroom components from peer institutions and give an overview of the $60M Instructional Space Improvement.
- March 8: āLearning Spaces of the Futureā Discussion
- March 22: SDRP tour and discussion of Participatory Design Process In Planning Learning Spaces
- April 5: The UGLY Tour
- April 19: Reflection and Review of Big 10 Best Practices
- May 3: Special Lincoln Hall tour
Photo Set of Flexible Learning Classrooms @ Illinois
HAB Photos Spring 2011, a set on Flickr.
Rooms 148, 152 and 154 in Henry Administration Building are general assignment classrooms utilized by the Rhetoric department. The Rhetoric Program Director, Dr. Catherine Prendergast, received a grant from the Library/IT Fee to renovate these classrooms to meet her program needs and pilot a new approach in classroom design that brings flexibility and new models of technology implementation to general assignment classrooms.
Supporting a curriculum that is highly collaborative and relies on a digital eBook platform, this space is designed to enable easy transitions into group work modes, multiple displays for better student access to technology, improved sight lines to engage with the electronic materials, and an easy-to-use control system for the instructor to manage the classroom.
Spring semester 2011 was the first semester these rooms were used. As we learn from the experience in all stages of design, construction, and teaching in flexible spaces, we are better able to work with faculty and students to meet the needs that technology, new approaches to teaching and learning, and emerging curriculums bring to the daily life of our campus community.