Learning Space Design Summit

DISTRIBUTED LEARNING SPACES:
PHYSICAL, BLENDED AND VIRTUAL
LEARNING SPACES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Professor Mike Keppell
Director, The Flexible Learning Institute &
Professor of Higher Education
Charles Sturt University
Tuesday, 30 November 2010 1

OVERVIEW

Pedagogy
Students who don’t attend a
campus
Distributed learning spaces
Students who are
undertaking a PhD at 70
years of age


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.


HIGHER EDUCATION PRINCIPLES

Equivalence of Learning Outcomes ethical obligations

traverses physical, blended
Student Learning Experience
and virtual learning spaces

learning outcomes, subject,
Constructive Alignment degree program, generic
attributes

Discipline Pedagogies speciﬁc needs of disciplines


SUBJECT INTERACTIONS

Information access (subject expectations)
Interactive learning (learner-to-content interactions)
Networked learning (learner-to-learner, learner-to-teacher
interactions)
User-generated content (learners-as-designers,
assessment-as-learning) (Herrington & Oliver, 2001).


LEARNING SPACES

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


Diversity of Learning Spaces

Physical Blended Virtual

Formal Informal Formal Informal

Mobile Personal

Professional
Outdoor
Practice


FORMAL & INFORMAL SPACES


Formal Virtual Informal Virtual
Learning Spaces Learning Spaces


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)


PERSONAL LEARNING SPACES

Studying subject materials while travelling to work via
train or bus may represent the learning space for some
students


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).

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.


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).


PERSPECTIVES ON BLENDED LEARNING

… It’s very, very hard to get people who come on
campus to want to do something that’s not face-to-face
and it’s very hard to get people who want to be totally
ﬂexible and do something at two o’clock in the morning
by themselves to actually want to engage with other
people (Teaching Fellow, 2008).


Putting it all
together


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


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)

CONCLUSION

Due to lifelong and lifewide learning students may range from
17-70
Increasingly learners are deciding spaces appropriate for their
own learning and life context
Personal learning spaces may not include the campus


http://www.skgproject.com


Learning Space Design Summit

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