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.)
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.