Flexible Learning Spaces Seminar
When: October 22, 2013
Time: 9:45am – 3:00pm (refreshments & lunch provided)
Where: University of Illinois Conference Center
REGISTER HERE
This event is brought to you by CITES Classroom and Conference Media Engineering (CCME) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Flexible Learning Spaces Seminar serves to provide information to participants regarding the newest developments in designing, installing, and utilizing technologies in physical spaces to promote active learning principles. With this event, second in CCME’s programming contributions, CCME continues to engage stakeholders in current explorations of the relationship between physical space and technology, in order to promote effective teaching and communication.
What is Flexible Learning?
Flexible learning places student choice at the center of the learning experience. It does so by combining student-centered pedagogy with physical infrastructure designed to provide teachers and students with multiple ways to engage in learning–individually or in groups, with computers or without them, in one part of the room or another.
Educause Learning Initiative provides an overview of the shift from traditional to flexible learning spaces: “Historically, classrooms and lecture halls have been designed with all students facing a desk or lectern for the instructor. This arrangement is appropriate for a specific type of teaching but is ill-suited for other approaches, particularly when students work in groups. As a result, a number of alternative classroom designs have emerged to support collaborative learning. These offer group-friendly seating at tables for four to twelve students. Whiteboards and projection displays are mounted on multiple walls of the room. Such designs enable a different dynamic, eschewing lecture in favor of collaborative activity, which might include laboratory investigation, interactive study, or alternative teaching methods like the flipped classroom. This approach to learning spaces is formalized under a number of different names—TILE, SCALE-UP, FLEX, and others—but all such schemes share a common desired outcome: to provide an environment that supports an evolution from a course model that emphasizes the lecture to a student-centered model based on collaborative knowledge discovery and creation.”
Flexible learning has been used to structure physical spaces as well as virtual ones. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, for instance, uses node chairs and smart boards to “remove students from a passive learning environment and instead create a space that encourages and facilitates their involvement in each and every class.”
Whether in virtual or physical space, flexible learning is defined by the principle that convenience and flexibility promote engagement.
Come participate in the Flexible Learning Summit to learn more about how innovations in infrastructure and pedagogy are combining to produce classrooms of the future.
What is Flexible Learning?
Flexible learning places student choice at the center of the learning experience. It does so by combining student-centered pedagogy with physical infrastructure designed to provide teachers and students with multiple ways to engage in learning–individually or in groups, with computers or without them, in one part of the room or another.
Educause Learning Initiative provides an overview of the shift from traditional to flexible learning spaces: “Historically, classrooms and lecture halls have been designed with all students facing a desk or lectern for the instructor. This arrangement is appropriate for a specific type of teaching but is ill-suited for other approaches, particularly when students work in groups. As a result, a number of alternative classroom designs have emerged to support collaborative learning. These offer group-friendly seating at tables for four to twelve students. Whiteboards and projection displays are mounted on multiple walls of the room. Such designs enable a different dynamic, eschewing lecture in favor of collaborative activity, which might include laboratory investigation, interactive study, or alternative teaching methods like the flipped classroom. This approach to learning spaces is formalized under a number of different names—TILE, SCALE-UP, FLEX, and others—but all such schemes share a common desired outcome: to provide an environment that supports an evolution from a course model that emphasizes the lecture to a student-centered model based on collaborative knowledge discovery and creation.”
Flexible learning has been used to structure physical spaces as well as virtual ones. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, for instance, uses node chairs and smart boards to “remove students from a passive learning environment and instead create a space that encourages and facilitates their involvement in each and every class.”
Whether in virtual or physical space, flexible learning is defined by the principle that convenience and flexibility promote engagement.
Come participate in the Flexible Learning Summit to learn more about how innovations in infrastructure and pedagogy are combining to produce classrooms of the future.