Categories: Processes and Tools Sectors: Designers
Universities have traditionally been focused around passive learning in large lecture theatres. For some time now there has been an ongoing debate in academic circles as to whether this type of teaching provides the best way to learn.
In recent years technical developments such as podcasting, live streaming of lectures on the web, web forums and online student noticeboards, have resulted in less reliance on these traditional lectures for learning.
RMIT University in Melbourne is currently working towards establishing more collaborative open learning and teaching spaces for its students and staff. The vision is to ultimately transform RMIT’s learning spaces into student-centred environments.
Research – including reports on students’ lifestyles, use of technology and time spent on activities, external CEQ surveys and internal RMIT questionnaires – indicate that poor quality teaching spaces have a negative effect on students’ learning experience and their perception of that experience.
New technologies have led to new ways of living and learning. Students can now learn everywhere and not just in a classroom. Anywhere they can access a computer, talk with another student or read a book is a potential learning space.
Enabling learning university-wide
Innovative and positive design decisions will enable the whole of RMIT to become a learning space and not just the lecture theatres or classrooms.
The university has embarked upon a $500 million capital works program, which is being rolled out over a five-year period. This investment represents the largest expenditure on capital works in the university’s 122-year history.
The School of Property, Construction and Project Management is an early adopter of this space transformation, which will be ongoing in teaching and learning spaces throughout RMIT. The school has recently grown and now has the opportunity to consolidate and upgrade its accommodation. This has provided a great chance to develop and trial this new style of space.
The new teaching spaces designed by Payne Pattenden Architects. which will open early this year, will be smaller than the traditional lecture theatres, but they offer much more interactive learning spaces for everyone involved.
Students will now be more active participants in the learning process, not just passive listeners. The new interactive spaces will result in more communication between students and staff, in and out of classes, which is vital for universities if they are to remain relevant and engaging for students in the 21st century.
At the school, the new teaching spaces will include five state-of-the-art rooms, holding up to 50 students each. The rooms will feature eight to nine round tables with six chairs to each table. The school space also includes a student lounge and balcony for informal learning and socialising.
Promoting discussion and collaboration
The tables in the teaching spaces are not burdened with data or power, as we don’t want the new classrooms turning into clinical computer labs. Instead, students bring their own laptops in, which helps to promote discussion and collaboration.
The school now has 80 laptops for students to borrow and use for this purpose.
In each room there will be three interactive screens that can illustrate projects, items for discussion, or highlight particular student’s work for review by the whole class.
The new facilities are part of a $1.7 million school consolidation and upgrade, bringing different areas of the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT together in one building in state-of-the-art facilities.
The new school location, in conjunction with these innovative teaching and learning spaces, will also help to build a new style of school community.
For example, a student lounge in this new format has been in operation for a few months and is already resulting in more frequent and dynamic two-way dialogue between students and staff.
Students are working collaboratively in the space on group projects, interacting much more than previously and using the space confidently. Staff are also more approachable in the space than in lecture theatres or offices.
The objective is to promote a deep way of learning where students relate ideas together and construct their own meaning, rather than the surface approach of old.
These new, innovative open learning spaces are crucial for this to happen now and into the future. These changes must be embraced and championed if universities are to remain key players in society and relevant to future students and staff.
Professor Ron Wakefield is head of school for property, construction and project management and the chair of the learning spaces advisory group at RMIT University.
