This document discusses distributed learning spaces in higher education. It defines distributed spaces as those that exist beyond formal classrooms, including blended spaces that integrate online and in-person learning. It outlines principles of flexible and blended learning that optimize student engagement regardless of study mode. Learning can occur across a diversity of formal, informal, physical, blended and virtual spaces. The implications are that universities must support lifelong and distributed learning across multiple spaces to meet diverse student and disciplinary needs.

1. DISTRIBUTED SPACES FOR
LEARNING IN
HIGHER EDUCATION
Professor Mike Keppell
Director, The Flexible Learning Institute &
Professor of Higher Education
Charles Sturt University
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2. OVERVIEW
Distributed spaces
Ecological university
Assumptions and principles
underlying higher education
Pedagogy
Diversity of spaces
Implications
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3. OVERVIEW
Growing acceptance that learning occurs in different ‘places’
Proliferation of approaches emerging including ‘flexible’, ‘open’, ‘distance’
and ‘off-campus’ that assist the ubiquity of learning in a wide
range of contexts (Lea & Nicholl, 2002).
Growing acceptance of life-long and life-wide learning also have a
major influence on distributed learning spaces.
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4. FLEXIBLE LEARNING
“Flexible learning” provides opportunities to improve the student
learning experience through flexibility in time, pace, place
(physical, virtual, on-campus, off-campus), mode of study (print-
based, face-to-face, blended, online), teaching approach
(collaborative, independent), forms of assessment and staffing.
It may utilise a wide range of media, environments, learning spaces and
technologies for learning and teaching.
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5. BLENDED & FLEXIBLE LEARNING
“Blended and flexible learning” is a design approach that examines
the relationships between flexible learning opportunities, in
order to optimise student engagement and equivalence in learning
outcomes regardless of mode of study (Keppell, 2010, p. 3).
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7. ASSUMPTIONS
Universities value and seek to enhance the skills essential for lifelong and
life wide learning, developing graduates who will continue to develop
intellectually, professionally and socially beyond the bounds of
formal education.
Universities believe that programs, services and teaching methods should
be responsive to the diverse cultural, social and academic
needs of students, enabling them to adapt to the demands of
university education and providing them with the cultural capital
for life success.
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8. ECOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
Instead of ‘having an impact’ on the world, ecological universities seek
sustainability and more importantly self sustainability in multiple
levels of interactions. It adopts a ‘care for the world’ as opposed
to an ‘impact on the world’ approach (Barnett, 2011).
It is a networked university that values and fosters its networks
and their interconnectedness and feels a responsibility to the
wellbeing of these networks.
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9. HIGHER EDUCATION PRINCIPLES
Access and Equity &
ethical obligations
Equivalence of Learning Outcomes
traverses physical, blended
Student Learning Experience and virtual learning spaces
‘place’ is less important
learning outcomes, subject,
Constructive Alignment degree program, generic
attributes
Discipline Pedagogies specific needs of disciplines
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10. LEARNING SPACES
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11. LEARNING SPACES
Physical, blended or virtual ‘areas’ that:
enhance learning
that motivate learners
promote authentic learning interactions
Spaces where both teachers and students optimize the
perceived and actual affordances of the space
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12. Diistributed Learning Spaces
Physical Blended Virtual
Formal Informal Formal Informal
Mobile Personal Academic
Professional
Outdoor
Practice
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13. FORMAL & INFORMAL SPACES
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17. SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF
LEARNING SPACE DESIGN
The SKG project has established seven principles of learning space
design which support a collaborative and student-centred approach to
learning:
Comfort: a space which creates a physical and mental sense of ease
and well-being
Aesthetics: pleasure which includes the recognition of symmetry,
harmony, simplicity and fitness for purpose
Flow: the state of mind felt by the learner when totally involved in the
learning experience
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18. SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF
LEARNING SPACE DESIGN
• Equity: consideration of the needs of cultural and physical differences
• Blending: a mixture of technological and face-to-face pedagogical
resources
• Affordances: the “action possibilities” the learning environment
provides the users, including such things as kitchens, natural light, wifi,
private spaces, writing surfaces, sofas, and so on.
• Repurposing: the potential for multiple usage of a space (Souter,
Riddle, Keppell, 2010) (http://www.skgproject.com)
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19. VIRTUAL LEARNING SPACES
Virtual learning spaces provide unique opportunities that are unavailable
in physical learning spaces
These affordances or ‘action possibilities’ allow a richer range of
learning interactions
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20. Formal Virtual Informal Virtual
Learning Spaces Learning Spaces
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21. FACEBOOK
“Online and offline worlds are clearly coexisting, but used in
different ways for developing and sustaining different types of
relationships. For example, face-to-face friendships from home
have been developed and sustained through continued
online interactions, whilst newer online relationships have
flourished at university and developed into face-to-face indepth
relationships” (Madge, Meek, Wellens and Hooley 2010, p. 145).
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22. VIRTUAL SPACES
FLI Website: http://www.csu.edu.au/division/landt/flexible-learning/
FLI Blog: http://blendedandflexiblelearning.blogspot.com/
FLI Twitter: http://twitter.com/#%21/FLINews
FLI Delicious: http://www.delicious.com/flexiblelearninginstitute
Design: http://blendedandflexiblelearning.wikispaces.com/home
FLI YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FLIMedia
Slidehare: http://www.slideshare.net/mkeppell
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23. MOBILE LEARNING SPACES
“Learning when mobile means that context becomes all-important since
even a simple change of location is an invitation to revisit
learning” (ALT-J Vol 17, No.3 p.159)
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24. MOBILE LEARNING SPACES
“With its strong emphasis on learning rather than teaching, mobile
learning challenges educators to try to understand learners’ needs,
circumstances and abilities even better than before. This extends to
understanding how learning takes place beyond the
classroom, in the course of daily routines, commuting and travel, and
in the intersection of education, life, work and
leisure” (Kukulska-Hulme, 2010, p.181).
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25. ACADEMIC SPACES
Barnett (2011) suggests that “today’s university lives amid multiple
time-spans, and time-speeds” (p. 74). He suggests that the
arrival of constant email would be considered one of these multiple
time-spans, and other time spans might include historians who focus
on the past and researchers who may focus on the future of their
research.
Universities may need to be conscious of the 24/7 existence of
their students across the globe, each in their own unique time-span.
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26. ACADEMIC SPACES
Barnett (2011) suggests that academics may be active in university
spaces that may include:
Intellectual and discursive space which focus on the
contribution to the wider public sphere.
Epistemological space which focuses on the “space available for
academics to pursue their own research interests” (p. 76).
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27. ACADEMIC SPACES
Pedagogical and curricular space focuses on the spaces
available to trial new pedagogical approaches and new curricular
initiatives.
Ontological space which focuses on ‘academic being’ which is
becoming increasingly multi-faceted beyond the research, teaching
and community commitments. In fact “the widening of
universities’ ontological spaces may bring both peril
and liberation” (p. 77).
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28. PERSONAL LEARNING SPACES
Personal learning environments (PLE) integrate formal and
informal learning spaces
Customised by the individual to suit their needs and allow them to
create their own identities.
A PLE recognises ongoing learning and the need for tools to
support life-long and life-wide learning.
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29. CONNECTIVISM
PLE may also require new ways of learning as knowledge has changed to
networks and ecologies (Siemens, 2006).
The implications of this change is that improved lines of communication
need to occur.
“Connectivism is the assertion that learning is primarily a network-
forming process” (p. 15).
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33. OUTDOOR LEARNING SPACES
These pathways, thoroughfares and
occasional rest areas are generally
given a functional value in traffic
management and are more often
than not developed as an after
thought in campus design. As such
the thoroughfares and rest areas are
under valued (or not recognized) as
important spaces for teaching and
learning (Rafferty, 2010).
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39. CONCLUSION
Adapatability
Study time and place
Decision-making
It is time that we begin changing our thinking about the ‘place’ of
learning.
We need to let go of the tradition of universities as being a ‘singular
place’ where learning and teaching occur.
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40. Putting it all
together
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