Welcome to Designing Learning Spaces

Welcome to Designing Learning Spaces Wallenberg Hall Summer Institute 2007 Institute Philosophy Prior to Arrival Institute Wiki

Wallenberg Hall Summer Institute 2007

Welcome to the  home of the 2007 Summer Institute at Wallenberg Hall workshop on Designing Learning Spaces. In formal learning settings (classrooms) and informal settings (everywhere other than a classroom) the design of space shapes personal interactions and affords learning opportunities. During this two-day workshop, participants will gain experience in applying learning and design principles to creating learning spaces for a variety of settings. At the end of the session, participants will take away a greater understanding of how pedagogy, design, and technology can intersect to provide an optimal learning experience.

• Workshop Schedule : Detailed list of our plans for this session

• Participants: Each participant will have her or his own page to create and experiment with

• Images from Wallenberg Hall: Some pictures of  the activities that have happened here in Wallenberg Hall

• Something Interesting: A page for all workshop participants to share things big and small that others will find valuable

• Comments and Reflections: A place for all of us to post comments, reflections, and suggestions
• Wiki Sandbox: A page to play around with and experiment with - nobody will get hurt!
• Learning Spaces Resources: Presentations, lists, and other files accessed throughout the workshop

Institute Philosophy

• Engage with each other: This workshop is an opportunity to develop ideas, share specific projects with a community interested in designing better spaces for learning. Take advantage of the fact that we are coming together and the fact that many of us will likely not see each other again - i.e. take risks in this community. The best case is that we'll generate some powerful ideas that can help us all; the worst case is that we'll never engage with each other again, which is where we were before we all met!

• Capture now to reflect later: Following through on all of the ideas we are bound to generate is outside the scope of a 2-day institute. One of the key functions of this wiki is to have a place where we can all capture ideas that can inspire ourselves and the other participants here. This site should be somethign that we an all look at after the institute and show others as a collective memory of what we did here.

• Celebrate Risk : We will be prototyping new activities and processes throughout the institute with the hope of making learning more active. So if we see something that is not working as smoothly as it should be critical, but also be constructive with ideas on how to make things better.
• Be Selfish: Might seem a bit crude and contradictory to the principles above, but the point is that we have some flexibility in our curriculum so if any of us want to look at something in more depth that we haven't talked about, let us know. If you have a specific opportunity for a space that you'd like all of us to contribute to, let us know and we'll make it happen. Also, take advantage of the break times, meals, and the lingering times to push harder on the ideas that we didn't have time to develop in the more formal parts of the institute.

Prior to Arrival

This institute is designed to maxmize our brief time together.  Before coming to the sesion on August 13 all of us will gain significant value if each of us does a little preparation.  So please do the following two things before coming to the workshop; Combined this should take perhaps a total of 1-2 hours:

• Create a profile for yourself on the Participants page of this wiki;  just click on your name and you'll find yourself creating a webpage in pbwiki's new editor.  There is no right way to do this so share some important points about yourself and some less important points too!

• Develop a brief presentation about a learning space on your own campus that you are seeking to improve through this workshop.  It could be an existing space or one that in the planning stages.  It can be a renovation, remodel, or just making better use of an existing space. One of the key activities that we will be doing is to 'workshop' participants' campus learning spaces similar to a writers' workshop.  All of us will have a chance to share a project and get feedback from each other.

  • Use this LearningSpacePresentation.ppt for this activity; please email it to me 'dgilbert at stanford.edu' in advance of our session

  • Plan to speak to our whole group for 5-8 minutes; we will also be breaking into smaller groups to analyze each of our projects in much more depth

Optional Reading:

• How People Learn Executive Summary from the National Academies of Science - a comprehensive view of the latest on learning theory
• Learning Space Design Theory and Practice by Malcolm Brown. A very useful table for connecting traits from today's learners with technologies and space ideas.
• Educause Review issue on Learning Space Design. Please read the first three features articles (Johnson/Lomas; Wedge/Kearns; and Long/Ehrman) We'll discuss these on Day 2 (Tue/Fri) of the institute.
• Assessing Learning Spaces from Educause e-book on [learning spaces http://www.educause.edu/learningspaces]
• Designing Learning Spaces Course Website: Link to Stanford School of Education course on Designing Learning Spaces

Institute Wiki

This webpage is actually a 'wiki' - any page can be edited by any of us in this community just by using your regular web browser.  While this technology is best known for supporting collaboration, the key advantage for this workshop is that we can all contribute to a common knowledge base that all of us can take advantage of long after our session is over.

There are at least 60 different kinds of wiki technologies (probably closer to 100); This particular wiki is a pbwiki, a free version of a commercially available solution. 

PBWiki Tutorials and videos

More about wikis from Wikipedia