Future of Learning Spaces in Higher Education

Reflections on the PKAL-in-Boston Forum for Architects & Friends

Purpose:
To explore the question, "what is the question that you would like your clients (those just now anticipating new spaces for science) to be asking you?"

Participants:
Representatives of twenty architectural firms in the Boston area, colleagues from MIT and Brandeis, Jeanne Narum from PKAL.

Background:
Two of Jeanne's most frightening "late-night" thoughts are:

• that coming generations of planners are content with cloning the current generation of spaces for science, giving no attention to the changing context that in 2030 people will be bemoaning the current generation of spaces in the same way we are now bemoaning those from the Sputnik era.
• We don't want to be stuck with a static model of the 21st century science facility.

PKAL's focus on facilities was an integral part of PKAL from the beginning, recognizing that new approaches (new wine) would not work in most old spaces (old bottles) As with all PKAL, our focus on facilities emphasized that there were already pioneering thinkers about the relationship of space and program, and PKAL took care to identify those pioneers and capture their wisdom and experience---translating that into some theories that could inform the broader community of planners (academics and architects alike). Thus, we never just helped people fix leaky roofs, but always forced planners to begin from "what do you want to do" and "why do you want to do it now" and "who are the students you seek to serve" in planning new spaces for science. That said, it is remarkable now to step back and see how dramatically and rapidly the world is changing, in ways that we could never have anticipated in 1989, or in 1992 (the year of the 1st PKAL facilities workshop).

Some examples (to point out the obvious):

• the speed and pervasiveness of pedagogical change, which is increasingly coupled with assessment of how new pedagogies succeed (and why they succeed---implications for space planning
• the focus on student and student learning, instead of on teachers and teaching
• the focus on students as "digital natives"
• the potential of technologies as tools for learning, research and teaching---within an individual campus community, within disciplinary communities locally, regionally, and globally

Questions:
What kind of questions should "clients" be asking/or we be asking of clients:

• how will the building express the soul of our community?
• how can the building illustrate the culture of our campus?
• what should we be able to do inside the spaces (what do you want to do inside the spaces?)
• what are the characteristics of the graduates who will have learned and worked and lived in these spaces?
• where is the evidence for spaces that work, what do you mean by spaces that work?
  (See list of questions submitted by architects prior to the forum.)

  Questions Posed by Architects

Group Discussion

Question A:

What is the teaching/learning experience of the future to be like?

Response:

• it will be a just-in-time remote (virtual) laboratory one that provides remote access to instrumentation, rather than fitting all equipment into every science facility; learners (students and faculty) will be able to see/use the experimental devices through webcam, and be able to control the devices remotely with a browser.
• one which is a model for how we want to work and to live
• one that enables synchronous learning and teaching across the globe 24/7, distributing information, ideas, and materials
• the university/college will be seen as a "publishing" entity, producing content for global distribution to learners
• the laboratory will become a "maintenance of experiments" device rather than a source of discovery
• there will be "micro-economic" collectives (such as MIT is now creating), alliances when and where they are needed (just-in-time)
• simulations of things very small and very large will be created
• learning gains will be improved as faculty match technologies to attention spans to receptivity and styles of learning
• there will be new physical characteristics of these remote labs:
  • there will be virtualized access to shared resources, with high density shared housing services
  • the climate control of resource space will be modeled and adjusted remotely
  • there will have to be new financial models to account for the purchase and use and maintenance of these resources
  • we will have to figure out how to overcome social barriers, by making all surfaces writable, by capturing everything

Benefits of the remote lab:

• no need for inventory on individual campuses
• promotes 24 hour life cycle of a space in being a "serial reusable lab" with project based activity space elsewhere
• the "virtual" requirements are electronic or paper
• activity is/can be small scale, components (e.g., small robotics)
• students have the ability to build something complex, such as a material or a chemical process
• need a separate, "hands-on" personal space for recreation, such as a greenhouse for growing orchids.

Question B:

Can we separate the design/creation of a new STEM building into two parts?

Response:

• flexible spaces that can change many times during the life-time of the facility
• building components that will remain stable during the useful life of the facility
  Further questions: Who owns or controls the facility? Who owns or controls the program spaces?

Question C:

• What is the shortest route to everywhere (actual and/or virtual)?
• What makes a successful teaching/learning space?
• How do you bring majors out of the lab and bring non-science majors into the lab?
• How do you serve students with different learning styles?

Question D:

What makes a building efficient?

Question E:

Is the lab ready to explode?

Response:

Get the sandbox ready (sandbox=place for pioneers to play around to determine new approaches to what works/what might work). This team wondered why the lab is so much like it was twenty years ago, in terms of equipment, curriculum, cost, need for predictability, class size, casework, departmental ownership, decision structure, etc.

We believe that the lab will soon become many different things:

• a student-directed studio
• a place for lab/classroom gaming
• a venue for new connections to the humanities and the arts
• a point from which to connect to collaborations within and beyond the campus.

A question that was threaded throughout the discussion: how can we take the high cost of science facilities/science education out of the equation?

NEXT STEPS

• begin a wiki discussion to continue to identify and address critical questions
• find, for analysis and dissemination, examples of pioneering spaces (concepts/ideas) that might be forecasting the future of undergraduate spaces for science.

GOAL FOR PKAL

• To have a major posting on the PKAL website on these and relevnat issues by the end of June, 2006.

Photos from Boston Forum

Welcome to the guided instruction research and evaluation project. Kaleidoscope seemed an appropriate name for this activity as it reflects the variety of tools and approaches to developing guided instruction or scaffolded learning learning activities.

DRAFT Project Plan: Guided Inquiry

Statement of the Problem:

Academic Computing and CECI engagements with several MIT faculty have indicated a use for computer-based tools to facilitate the guided inquiry process for students in Mathematics (Miller), Physics (Belcher), Aero-Astro (Willcox), Mechanical Engineering (Hunter), and, potentially, Biology (Walker).

Background:

Professors Miller and Belcher have developed a series of applets and simulations to explain different mathematical and physical concepts, but would like to provide a larger framework for these individual activities. While students can use the applets and simulations to experiment with different data sets, they do not necessarily develop an understanding of what the simulations mean in a larger context, or of when to apply a particular equation in a different setting. Students are learning pieces of problem-solving technique, but not the procedural knowledge of how and when to apply the pieces.

Professor Willcox has attempted to address this issue for AeroAstro students by creating a textual guide on applying mathematical principles to engineering problems. To date the guide exists only as a document, so interactive practice opportunities are not available to students. Prof. Willcox has been in contact with Prof Miller, however, and is open to the idea of creating a flexible computer-based framework to support this effort.

Phil - description of Hunter work? Should Walker be mentioned at this stage?

Deliverables:

1. Review of Existing Projects - summarize current work in this area, identifiying their goals, design strategy, strengths and weaknesses

1. Design Criteria Important to MIT Faculty - specifiy esign criteria MIT faculty require for a system create useful guiding learning activities.

1. Create common workspace (wiki) to organize, share, and support guided inquiry investigation.

Guided Learning Tools to Consider:

• Pedagogica, (http://pedagogica.concord.org/^{Image Removed}) - "Pedagogica is a software environment that converts tools and models into hypermodels. These are inquiry-based lessons that provide guidance to students as they use the software. Pedagogica tailors the appearance of the tools and the available options, presenting only those that are relevant to the activity. The interface is also used to assess student progress. It reports feedback, in real-time over the Internet, as students work through a series of activities."
• LAMS (http://www.lamsinternational.com/^{Image Removed}) - LAMS manages and delivers online collaborative learning activities
  by providing teachers with a highly intuitive visual authoring environment for creating sequences of learning activities. These activities can include a range of individual tasks, small group work and whole class activities based on both content and collaboration.
• .exe (http://exe.cfdl.auckland.ac.nz/^{Image Removed}) - An off-line authoring environment to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup.
• Simple Sequencing (http://www.icodeon.com/product.do^{Image Removed}) -
• Connexions (http://cnx.rice.edu^{Image Removed}) -
• Learn eXact (http://www.learnexact.com^{Image Removed})
• Concept Tutor and Query Image (http://engage.doit.wisc.edu^{Image Removed})

Mike's thoughts on these tools

Simulations:

Here is a link to the prototype Pendulum Simulation

• (http://mv.ezproxy.com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/simulations/pendulum.jnlp^{Image Removed})

Timeline: By June 1st we hope to have completed initial review of existing systems plus a list of design criteria to discuss at our next meeting.

Participants:

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