Learning spaces and environments

University of Melbourne experts reveal the course being charted by modern Australian university campuses, including the increasing role of Indigenous co-design

Dr Vallance said it was assumed in the past libraries would not survive the rise of the internet.

“What people failed to realise is that libraries are fundamentally social places,” he said. “They are places where you meet people, you have conversations, where you’re not communicating electronically, but face-to-face.”

Schools will wait up to five years for their air conditioning, but P&Cs have been urged not to get impatient and install it themselves.

Footscray Learning Precinct will bring together all levels of education to benefit students and the community, say University of Melbourne experts.

Free range chickens have better rights than students in cramped Victorian schools, according to one Melbourne mother.

Spaces for Knowledge Generation is an ALTC project which was undertaken as a partnership between La Trobe University as lead institution, Charles Sturt University, Apple and Kneeler Design Architects. The context of the learning experience necessarily changes over time, with technological, economic and social developments influencing the types of learning spaces learners and teachers require to achieve their learning outcomes, and this $220,000 project was designed to inform, guide and support sustainable development of learning and teaching spaces and practices, maximising flexibility so as to be used by as many disciplines as feasible. The project was based on the philosophy that constructivist approaches to learning, as well as to research and study, should make use of technologies and approaches that students favour, and that learning spaces should therefore be organised to accommodate learner-generated aspects of learning. Spaces for Knowledge Generation provides a model for designing student learning environments that is future-focused and sustainable for the medium term.

More than 1300 schools have put their hands up for airconditioning, but only 27 have received it.

The student engagement tools within Echo360 allow remote students, as well as those in class, to interact with other students as well as their instructor. They are able to participate in polls and quizzes posed by their lecturer and also ask or answer questions with other students using the in-class discussion tool.

Victoria needs as many as 200 new schools in the coming decade; University of Melbourne research is helping inform their design, to meet modern education needs.

Prefab technology is driving the evolution of classrooms in Australia; University of Melbourne experts looks at how modular design is keeping pace with demand.