First of all it involved a bus. Conferences and buses. I have bad feelings about these things. Conferences and buses sometimes mean things like: the only spare seat has dog do on it (Ed Media 2004); the journey involves crossing several counties (HEA 2004), or several countries (Ed Media 2004); or people being very ill on the way back (any conference in Scotland); or carrying ex SHU staff out of Disneyland and putting them in the luggage rack on the bus (Educause 2005, Anaheim). But I digress.
I always like a big night out on my last night at a conference, and this time I decided to visit a library. The Georgia Tech learning space was pretty impressive, and not far off what we have with the Adsetts, it was a bit like the Studio with Herman Miller furniture. In the pursuit of objectivity, I conducted a quick ethnographic investigation outside the library. I joined the smokers, and lured in by the promise of english nicotene, they told me the facility was great but it didnt go far enough. What we had was less than 10% of the space transformed, and the students were a bit baffled as to why the rest hadnt been done. I will put up some links so you can see it later.
Andrew "chickens out of most things, like getting a conference bus" Middleton did ask me later on if these things only worked in new buildings. That is a great question. What isnt funny is that SHU has nearly £70m worth of building going on and we are building buildings for the student of 2007 - we should be thinking about 2012 and beyond. There are only so many things you can do with furniture etc we should be taking more risks along the lines of the immersive learning environment we are thinking of installing. Richard Mather can tell you more about that.
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3 comments:
well - it isn't really a conference until Paul has endured some horrendous coach experience so looks like ELI have got all conference-goers needs covered.
I'm interested in the pictures of Georgia Tech - a lot of the "new learning environments = flexible furniture" discussion is getting very, very tired, but Herman Miller can still be surprisingly transformative at times. I know Liz has some great stuff on where to go beyond furniture but she is living it up in Worksop today, so may not be able to comment until this post had fallen off into the archive - what's the protocol on commenting on old postings - is it allowed? cos I've done a few today, oops.
Spaces are evolving like the technology - students want less and less passed down by us paternalistically, but they want us to provided what they really need and for it to be absolutely top quality. It is easier for us to provide lots of "safe" than a small amount of "high risk". Anyone spot another disconnect?
I did like the pictures of the library which were at http://theubiquitouslibrarian.typepad.com/
which someone posted earlier. They had student employees who designed a Super Mario theme for the multimedia lab, and the dropdown power strips from the ceiling sounded convenient, as there are no cords to trip on like with wall sockets (or you could take the adsetts approach and ban students from using any power outlet in the building! That's a great way to encourage them to come.)
When is 'too late' to respond? asked Louise. I've no idea but I'm now the third to follow her and I'm revisiting this at least a week later! Oh well, talking into a void as is my want...
I've learnt one of the secrets of management and survival is to smoke with strange and dangerous people. Unfortunately I've closed off that option.
There is a very healthy cynicism about furniture in this thread. I haven't really read too many articles for short or taller people on this subject, but furniture like other technology, seems so stuck in time. I am also not convinced students know the answer to what is good. Like other learning technologies we should look at behaviour and tie our ideas to social networking, multi-tasking, stop-start, fragmented ways of living and learning where connectivity is key.
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