Informal Group on Learning Spaces Explores Haunted Campus Locations

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Leslie Hammersmith

In the spirit of Halloween, the informal group on learning spaces took a tour of buildings and locations laced with dramatic stories of the past, some stories a little far-fetched, edging more on Urban Myths, and some stories whose gruesome details were reported in the news media at some point. Luckily, there aren’t that many gruesome stories to tell about the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. I admit, I was a tad disappointed that I couldn’t find many horrible tales of tragedy and hauntings to embellish the ghost stories that would accompany the “haunted tour” of campus. I was kind of hoping to uncover the kind of ghost sightings that would attract Ghost Adventures to come to our campus to film an episode of their show. We may have a few potential spots for ghost chasers to investigate some well-accepted ghost stories, but overall we were able to go on an entertaining walk on a perfect fall day.

Perfect fall foliage on the quad at University of Illinois

A perfect fall day on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign quad.

Some of our tour included just plain spooky locations, like the not-so-well-known underground tunnels connecting buildings on the south end of campus. While I couldn’t find any documentation of ghost sightings or unexplained events in the tunnels, it was easy to imagine the events that could lead up to an eternal haunting in such a place. When we found a deep freezer in one of the tunnels, and of course had to open it, we found black trash-bag covered . . . somethings . . . perhaps carcasses? Okay, that is purely speculation, but it made several of us very squeamish. We closed the freezer and moved quickly for the exits!

Informal Group on Learning Spaces braves a narrow tunnel passage.

Informal Group on Learning Spaces haunted tour participants brave a steep, narrow staircase leading down to underground tunnels.

Since it was really a beautiful fall day to go on our haunted tour, we made sure to stop by the only purported grave site on the campus. You have to look for the grave marker for the first President of the University of Illinois between Altgeld Hall and Henry Administration Building in a small grove of trees.

The grave marker for the first President of the University of Illinois, John Milton Gregory. The inscription reads “If you seek his monument look about you.”

The real ghost stories we were hunting down on our tour are pretty well substantiated, as far as ghost stories go, that is. To prepare us for the places we were going to see, I found several well done video documentaries by University of Illinois students. These videos did a great job to give us the back stories and set the mood for ghostly encounters on our tour. I invite you to watch them. Best done in a darkened room. Alone.

The first video by DAVProductionsLV details the English Building and the supposed suicide of a student. University of Illinois | Haunting (2:32)

The second video documents the English Building, Urbana High School, and a supposed haunting in Noyes Lab (by TheKatherineKoko). Documentary – Haunted Urbana Champaign(4:22)

The final, longish video follows 2 students as they search for the exact locations of the ghost in the English Building. I love this video because the girls, Kelsey Shannon and Allyson Brown, are already spooked out before they enter the building. (8:02) Haunted English Building (INFO303)

The other locations/stories we examined were: Psychology Building, University YMCA, (old) Sociology Building near Roger Adams Lab, Natural Resources Building, Lincoln Hall (pre-renovation stories!), and the Stock Pavilion. You can learn more about these locations and the tales that have guaranteed their place in the ghost story traditions of University of Illinois at the Prairie Ghosts website which documents the history and hauntings of Illinois. Another great resource on the history of the buildings on the Illinois campus is the UI Histories Project, where you can find the full history of all of the campus buildings, including this history of the old Women’s Building (English Building), with photo archives: http://uihistoriesproject.chass.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/cview?SITEID=1&ID=80.

If you are lucky in your research, you will find even more student created bodies of work that document the legends that give our campus a rich heritage, filled with tantalizing ghost stories, myths, and folklore that stand the test of time. I’m continually impressed with the knowledge that we as a campus community continue to share and learn from. Even a light-hearted “Haunted Tour” of our spaces gave us a chance to see parts of the campus that not many of us get to see, and we become closer to the stories and to the experiences of our students. It helped a lot that we happened to have the perfect fall day for a walking tour, too.

Until Next Time,

Leslie

125 Classrooms Getting Comprehensive Renovation Over Next 5 Years

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Leslie Hammersmith

The Instructional Space Improvement initiative is a $70M, 5-year project that will bring some substantial improvements to learning spaces on the Illinois campus. A recent article in Inside Illinois shares the details of the huge project and features photos from the flexible learning pilot spaces in Henry Administration Building. The HAB classrooms are used as examples of some of the innovation the campus hopes results from this kind of comprehensive renovation.

If you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you are well aware that this project on flexible learning classrooms is near-and-dear to my heart. Based on the CITES Faculty Development Lab I designed in 2006 to showcase a flexible learning environment and conduct a pilot study on student engagement, faculty support and learning space design, the HAB rooms were funded by the Library IT Fee Committee to increase support of the highly collaborative pedagogy and increasing dependence on digital educational resources, such as etexts, that the Rhetoric Program required.

Front Page snapshot from Inside Illinois - classroom in HAB

A snapshot of the article teaser on the Inside Illinois website. This photo shows one of the renovated Henry Administration Building rooms.

I am thrilled to see that learning spaces and innovation in our classrooms are becoming top speaking points at the highest levels of our administration, and I am even more thrilled to offer a place for every interested person to gather to learn and share a vision of learning spaces for our campus’ future. Join the Informal Group on Learning Spaces every other week to get in the conversation.

Looking For Ghost Stories

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Leslie Hammersmith

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! 😉 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

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Leslie Hammersmith

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.

members of the informal group on learning spaces sit in a newly renovated classroom in Lincoln Hall

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 Spaces meeting schedule, or read our 2011-2012 annual report summary.

Spring 2012 Meetings of the Informal Group on Learning Spaces

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Leslie Hammersmith

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: “Learning Spaces of the Future” 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

Spring 2012 Series Announced for Informal Group on Learning Spaces

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Leslie Hammersmith

Join your colleagues in a bi-weekly informal gathering to talk about instructional spaces and informal learning spaces at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We meet bi-weekly on Thursdays from 9 AM – 10 AM in 23 Illini Hall (unless otherwise announced) starting February 9, 2012.

The purpose of the informal group is to provide a friendly, informal place for stakeholders at any level in the university to share projects, ideas, needs, dreams, etc about learning spaces. Come to build your network of colleagues who are interested and involved in many aspects of designing, using, and thinking about formal and informal learning spaces. Share your projects that are currently in progress, brainstorm ideas for the future, and get to know people who can help you be successful.

Spring 2012 Series Meeting Dates:

February 9

February 23

March 8

March 22 (Spring Break Special!)

April 5

April 19

See where we were in 2011! http://go.illinois.edu/grouponlearningspaces

Announcing Fall Series of Informal Group on Learning Spaces

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Leslie Hammersmith

The purpose of the informal group on learning spaces is to provide a friendly, informal place for stakeholders at any level in the university to share projects, ideas, needs, dreams, etc about learning spaces. Come to build your network of colleagues who are interested and involved in many aspects of planning, supporting, and using formal and informal learning spaces. Share your projects that are currently in progress, brainstorm ideas for the future, and get to know people who can help you be successful. The informal group may lead to more formal interactions elsewhere, but the more significant idea with the informal group is that we start developing relationships and networks, and share ideas.

The group meets bi-weekly on Thursdays at 9 AM in 23 Illini Hall. Not on the list? Contact Leslie Hammersmith, lkhammer at illinois dot edu to be added to the invitation and receive reminders and topic announcements. Fall 2011 dates are:

September 8

September 22

October 6

October 20

November 3

We look forward to seeing you!

Informal Group On Learning Spaces Hosts Tour On March 24

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Leslie Hammersmith

Who will be on campus tomorrow? If you are one of the lucky ones, consider joining the Informal Group on Learning Spaces at 9 AM to tour some of the newest facilities for students and see some fantastic learning spaces outside of classrooms! There will even be a demonstration of the cool donut-making machine in the Student Dining and Residential Programs (SDRP) Building! (Did you know that students could get fresh made donuts as part of their regular dining experience? I’m jealous!)

Tour details are below, and please be prompt as there are a lot of great spaces to see in a short time. Drop me a line if you plan to come so we will look for you.

SDRP/Nugent Hall Tour

Thursday, March 24, 2011

9 AM SHARP in SDRP Lobby

Hosts: Melissa Marriott and Gretchen Madsen

Nugent is the new hall that connects to SDRP and the first floor is dedicated to Beckwith program residents. SDRP has seminar room (classroom) spaces, small study spaces, the learning commons (including the library and computer lab), larger meeting rooms, dining for 1200, servery venues, coffee house, and c-store. It is a lot to squeeze in, but will give everyone a good look at learning spaces outside of classrooms.

Please gather in the lobby of the SDRP at 9 AM and we will depart from there. SDRP is on Gregory Drive, right behind Clark hall.

Find it on the Map.

Informal Group on Learning Spaces

A casual group of colleagues talking about learning spaces.

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