Architecture, Building and Planning - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview AvailableRethink: Interdisciplinary evaluation of academic workspaces(Architectural Science Association (ANZAScA), 2019)Academic workspace remains an emotive topic. It is bound tightly with each academic’s identity, purpose and status. As universities increasingly focus on cross-disciplinary collaboration to producenew knowledge, the sanctuary of the individual office is under challenge. Inspired by precedents in the commercial world, universities are experimenting with more open workspace environments with a desire topromote collaborationand increasespace utilisation.However,there is resistance withintheacademic community. Given this context, there is a surprising paucity of research into the design and occupation of academic workspaces. This research beginsto fill that gap through a scoping literature review specific to the academic workspaceand anew approach toacademic workspace evaluation (AWE). The AWE approach focuses on the alignment of people, purpose and place, differentiating itself from the predominant post-occupancy evaluation fociofbudget, time, environmental performance and user satisfaction. A key finding of the research has been that change management – as an integral aspect of the project design process –is as importantto the success of future-focused academic workspace projects as theirspatial design.
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ItemThe Missing Link: Aligning Blended Curricula with Physical Learning Spaces in Health Interprofessional Education(Springer Singapore, 2018)This chapter addresses the topic of aligning physical learning spaces with contemporary curricula in medicine and health professions education on university campuses. It is argued that the design of physical learning spaces is more important than ever at a time of an increased use of virtual learning approaches and a rapidly changing health landscape. The section discusses how to develop an educational building program of new learning spaces and how to repurpose existing spaces. A conceptual framework is based on the four scales—the networked learning landscape model—which was developed to assess existing learning spaces , analyze them in relation to emerging curricula and to design new learning spaces. The networked learning landscape model also enabled the dynamic integration of differing scales, something all to often overlooked in the development of new or repurposed existing learning spaces. The Karolinska Institutet case study provides insights into how educational leaders can take charge of developing physical learning spaces based on the educational theory. It also provides insights into how to work with faculty prior to, during and after a building project; indeed, how to—ultimately—give contemporary curricula an aligned physical expression to improve student learning based on current evidence and theories in education. The overall aim of this chapter is to present a case study which offers a practice-based, research-informed approach of how to ensure that the physical infrastructure of educational organizations supports high-quality learning. Karolinska Institutet and the Karolinska University Hospital, Sweden, are used as a case study on how to develop a building program for repurposing existing, and producing new, physical teaching and learning spaces. This case study is offered as an example of how to develop a process involving academics in lead roles in the teaching and learning space development program in order to better inform the educational purpose of a learning space project and its outcome s (Ellis and Fisher in Adapting to change in university learning space: Informing and being informed by feedback from senior university leaders, 2014). The emphasis is on how the approach and process were developed rather than the actual design and spatial solutions, which will make this case relevant for other sectors outside medical and health professions education. The case study presented here is based on the Future Learning Environment Project between 2009 and 2016. Over an 7-year period, the Future Learning Environment project at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital has been a whole-of-institution endeavor, aimed at providing the best possible learning environment for students, teachers and leaders to meet Karolinska Institutet’s and the Karolinska University Hospital’s aspirations, visions and missions (Karolinska Institutet, 2017a, b). The case study illustrates the use of research outcomes from a variety of sources and sectors in a translational sense for the practice of designing and realizing learning spaces (Ellis and Fisher, in Place -based spaces for networked learning. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 241–255, 2017).
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ItemNo Preview AvailableEvaluating Learning Environments: Snapshots of Emerging Issues, Methods and Knowledge(SENSE PUBLISHERS, 2016)The recent trend in innovative school design has provided exciting places to both learn and teach. New generation learning environments have encouraged educators to unleash responsive pedagogies previously hindered by traditional classrooms, and has allowed students to engage in a variety of learning experiences well beyond the traditional ‘chalk and talk’ common in many schools. These spaces have made cross-disciplinary instruction, collaborative learning, individualised curriculum, ubiquitous technologies, and specialised equipment more accessible than ever before. The quality of occupation of such spaces has also been encouraging. Many learning spaces now resemble places of collegiality, intellectual intrigue and comfort, as opposed to the restrictive and monotonous classrooms many of us experienced in years past. These successes, however, have generated a very real problem. Do these new generation learning environments actually work – and if so, in what ways? Are they leading to the sorts of improved experiences and learning outcomes for students they promise? This book describes strategies for assessing what is actually working. Drawing on the best thinking from our best minds – doctoral students tackling the challenge of isolating space as a variable within the phenomenon of contemporary schooling – Evaluating Learning Environments draws together thirteen approaches to learning environment evaluation that capture the latest thinking in terms of emerging issues, methods and knowledge.
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ItemTerrains 2015 Mapping Learning Environment Evaluation Across the Design and Education Landscape(LEaRN, University of Melbourne, 2015-09-03)Terrains, as its name suggested, was a cartographic examination of learning environment evaluation. It invited all higher-degree students working in learning environments to assemble and present a short synopsis of their research. Through the careful sequencing of papers, and input after each paper by expert interlocoteurs, Terrains explored how this research addressed evaluation of such spaces, and how this constituted a map of current thinking in learning environment evaluation. As such, Terrains was a working symposium, with new knowledge being generated from the exchange of ideas occurring around each presentation.
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ItemEvaluating Learning Environments for the Inclusion of Students with Hearing Difficulties(Sense Publishers, 2016)This chapter outlines an interdisciplinary approach to research and evaluation that accounts for technological innovations, pedagogical shifts and new legislative requirements for inclusion. Utilizing a mixed method multiple case study involving three students with hearing difficulties in one New Generation Learning Environment, the research described in this chapter explores issues surrounding the inclusion of students with hearing difficulties in new generation learning environments. At the time of writing, the study was in the final stages of data collection. This research explores the students’ perceptions of inclusion, aiming to uncover instances of opportunity for equitable participation in speaking, listening and learning situations. Underpinning this research is Brinkerhoff’s Success Case Methodology, and Radcliffe’s Pedagogy / Space / Technology Learning Environment Evaluation Framework. Whilst data collection methods privilege student voice, other corroborating evidence such as quantitative acoustic measures to determine the buildings capacity to control noise was collected. Photographs for the purpose of photo elicitation were gathered in an effort to enhance validity and support a multi-lens approach to understanding the setting. Interviews with school principals, teachers and students, with follow-up focus group discussions, broadened insights into the daily occurrences in the space. The study contributes to the development of universally inclusive learning environments by providing new approaches to evaluating learning environments for the inclusion of students with hearing difficulties.
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ItemPlans and Pedagogies: School Design as Socio-Spatial Assemblage(Sense Publishers, 2016)The concepts in this chapter were originally presented in the Journal of Architecture in 2013, addressing a design oriented audience. The research findings are included in this book to ensure an educational audience has the opportunity to see the links between pedagogy and space which were encountered in this study. The design of learning environments at every level from primary to tertiary is undergoing major transformations involving the proliferation of new learning spaces that are variously termed learning ‘streets’ or ‘commons’, ‘meeting’ spaces and ‘outdoor learning’ areas together with complex new interrelations and overlaps between them.1 Such changes are largely driven by long standing changes in pedagogical theory and practice that may be broadly described as a recognition of both formal and informal learning and a move from teacher-centred to student-centred learning. The traditional classroom is a product of a teacher-centred pedagogy, framing a hierarchic relation between teacher and students while closing out other activities and distractions. It is also a form of what Foucault (1979, 1980) terms a disciplinary technology where the gaze of authority works to produce a normalized and disciplined subject. It has long been clear that student-centred pedagogies are seriously constrained by traditional classrooms. What is not so clear is how new forms of open school environments are matched to the new pedagogies. The primary goal of this paper is to critically analyse a range of recent celebrated middle-school plans within such a theoretical and pedagogical framework.
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ItemThe Translational Design of Learning Environments(Sense Publishers, 2016)The transformation of design thinking through evidence-based design in health facilities planning is based on the medical model of clinical research. These studies ensure that the resultant evidence is sufficiently valid, replicable and double blinded to ensure the safety of a procedure under test for ultimate commercial use with patients. Also known as translational (clinical) research, the method has been adopted and adapted by health facility planners with qualitative and quantitative studies measuring, for example, the rate of healing of patients in different physical environments and in varying therapeutic regimes. The use of a scholarly evaluation rigour drawn from such methodologies and applied in developing new clinical procedures results in convincing evidence of the impact of the physical environment on human behaviour (Ulrich et al., 2004). Such an evidence-based approach is becoming essential in learning space design as the early 21stC sees the rapid emergence of wireless broadband and mobile communications devices that are inexorably changing the way people communicate, collaborate, create and transfer knowledge. The vast majority of our learning environments were designed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Now, in the 21stC, new learning environments are being reengineered to meet these new and emerging technologies. They are also being designed to support new knowledge production, learning and work practices. However, these developments have not been thoroughly evaluated to assess if they actually work and whether should be scaled-up widely across school systems.
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ItemEmerging Evaluation Knowledge in New Generation Learning Environments(Sense Publishers, 2016)There is a significant gap in learning environment discourse in connecting graduate attributes to affordances such as space, place, technology and pedagogy. Contemporary journals such as the International Journal of Learning Environments rarely include critical articles on aspects of the physical environment of learning communities (Cleveland & Fisher, 2014). Given the limited nature of emergent scholarly, peer reviewed knowledge related to the spatially oriented aspects of learning environments, any attempt to establish an effective research methodology to evaluate the impact of the physical environment on pedagogy and learning outcomes poses a significant challenge. But what is it that we are evaluating in new generation learning environments (NGLEs)? The continuing use of the term open plan (Waldrip, Cox & Jin, 2014) continues to be problematic if considered in the context of NGLEs. Alternative terms such as 'learning landscapes' (Lackney, 2015), technology enabled active learning (or TEAL, see MIT, 1999) and active learning classrooms (Whiteside, Brooks, & Walker, 2010; Walker, Brooks, & Baepler, 2011) denote a more nuanced 'take' on the terrains of learning. Added to this mix is the concept of 'open programs' that implies curriculum and pedagogical practices can be implemented over these open plans. It appears that the term open plan schools emanated from the 'open education' drive in the 1970s (Rodwell, 1998, p.103). A new conceptual language is needed, one that reflects the breadth of learning programs that can be carried out in spaces which are capable of morphing rapidly and organically to afford the spatial requirements needed to support a wide range of programs, pedagogical practices and curriculum needs.
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ItemResearch into identifying Effective Learning Environments(OECD Publications, 2005)The evaluation of school learning environments has for decades traditionally focused on the technical performance of the facilities with little attention being paid to their pedagogical performance or effectiveness. There are a range of ‘top down’ imperatives which have driven such an approach, including the need to sustainably finance educational infrastructure and show evidence as to how this money is being spent successfully. This need is emerging following the funding approaches now being taken by such bodies as the European Investment Bank and in Public Private Partnerships. On the other hand ‘bottom up’ imperatives have considered the pedagogical performance of learning environments as a means of providing feedback to authorities especially in the process of procurement. This in turn has influenced the development of planning and design guidelines. This paper examines more closely the educational learning environment and the qualitative and quantitative research measures that have been used in recent times to determine their effectiveness. It explores some of the pedagogy and environment performance measures that have evolved and views these in the context of emerging research and evidence which attempts to relate pedagogy (including student and teacher attitudes) to space. It examines some case studies and focuses on the recently developed DET Victoria pedagogy-space strategies. Finally some conclusions are drawn and suggestions made for possible future research directions.
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ItemPlacemaking Practice: Transforming Classrooms from the Inside Out – the Critical Role of Spatial Literacy(Council for Education Facility Planners International (CEFPI), 2004)For decades CEFPI, the OECD Program on Educational Building, the Schools Learning Laboratory and other related organisations have pursued transformative approaches to the planning and design learning environments to suit contemporary perceptions of learning. Yet these attempted paradigm shifts are predominantly applied by spatial practitioners 'from the outside-in'. The end recipient of these efforts, that is, the classroom teacher and his or her students, generally have little say in how their learning environments might be constructed to better serve their learning needs. This presentation will briefly explore creative pedagogical practices (resource-, problem- and project-based learning, active learning, students as researchers) and the flexibility of the curriculum framework to suggest how multiple literacies in students might be actively engaged in their daily learning lives in placemaking. In particular the development of spatial literacies augmented through spatially oriented pedagogical and curriculum development practices applied to the very classrooms in which students engage in an action-based 'pedagogy of architectural encounters' will be explored. Three case studies (one primary, two secondary) will be used to illustrate the idea of learning geographies to assess its worth in schools design. The presentation will examine how teacher professional development is fundamental to any cultural change or school transformation in parallel with school design innovations. Further, it is hoped that this paper will demonstrate an 'inside-out' transformative placemaking practice which will foster change from within the classroom, rather than being imposed from without.