Q: What kind of informal spaces do students frequent and how do they aid the learning process?
A: Students seek out many types of informal learning spaces, whether in large central facilities like student centres or libraries, or in distributed study or lounge zones near classrooms or residential buildings. The model of the learning commons (many in libraries) can offer students a full spectrum of flexible settings and learning support services at one location. Some involve writing centres, tutoring centres, academic counseling services, media services and other partners, as well as cafes, classrooms and computer labs. The convenience of having them closely co-located offers students the ability to engage with them all and personalise their own learning experience. Student commons can range from individual seats and two to three person work stations, to small group work clusters, lounge areas, group meeting rooms and larger multipurpose spaces. When these work settings are designed to enable co-creation of documents or products with shared screens and collaborative software, it can enrich the learning process.
Q: Can any of these spaces be interactive—where the discourse of knowledge takes place among faculty and students through the process of interaction and meeting?
A: Learning discourse is by definition interactive and traditionally has taken place anywhere on a campus where it is convenient to linger and talk. At DEGW, we think about the circulation space adjacent to classrooms as ‘learning corridors’ animated with seating alcoves and gathering areas, which allow students to spill out from classrooms and continue to debate issues they have been learning about.
Lounge spaces with seating and whiteboards at the cross roads of departmental suites can function as effective “front porches” to faculty offices, where students can cross paths with faculty. Well-positioned cafes can function as intellectual crossroads for a campus community, where undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff cross paths and linger to talk or connect to work.
Q: What infrastructure do institutes and campuses need to put in place to assist learning in informal environments?
A: Campuses need:
- IT infrastructure to support mobility, collaborative work, and institutional research repositories
- Academic computing infrastructure to support new ways of teaching and learning, digital scholarship, creating with digital resources and media, and knowledge management, sharing and development
- Learning support services infrastructure, to aid students in their journey
- Assessment infrastructure to research how well informal learning spaces are performing and supporting student engagement, and whether they can be linked to improved learning outcomes
- Planning process that guides improvement and planning of informal learning space on campus
- Budget infrastructure for developing and maintaining them.
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