In my last article I looked at the impact of the present and upcoming students changing learning behaviours, and how teaching pedagogy’s and therefore the estate will have to adapt in order to accommodate the changing demands. One common element of this teaching pedagogy change is the greater focus on group, interactive, discussion led and gamified contact hours rather than lecture based sessions (i.e. large group of students all listening to lecturer).
Many are starting to address this new demand and are seeing success as a result. For example the TEAL (Technology Enhanced Active Learning) project at MIT developed two new classrooms focussed on addressing the changing student behaviour requirements and “The teaching methods used in the TEAL classroom produced about twice the average normalized learning gains for low-, intermediate-, and high-scoring students when compared to traditional instruction”. These are remarkable results and indicate the potential gains Universities and Colleges can make by ensuring their teaching methods and teaching spaces reflect the changing student learning behaviours.
From a space management perspective there is however an obvious potential issue with wanting to change the way students are taught and that is the space this change requires. The lecture theatre style teaching spaces are one of if not the, most efficient use of teaching space when considering the [Read more…]