Pedagogy, technology and place: rethinking higher education learning spaces

Nicol Pan and Robert Fox
University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong SAR, China

Changing socio-economic structures, government policies, epistemological frameworks and student profiles, and the ubiquitous access to new and evolving information and communication technologies (ICT), have created a need to rethink the learning environments we offer our students. The impact of, and response to, these influencing factors varies from region to region and institution to institution, and are shaping the learning environments in different ways. This paper focuses on the major shifts occurring in teaching and learning practices within a number of higher education institutes and how these changes have contributed to the rethinking and reevaluation of both the physical and virtual learning spaces on these campuses. For example, reevaluating the effectiveness and value of existing learning and teaching approaches has prompted educational organizations to experiment with more collaborative learning and learner-centred approaches, often accompanied by embedding ICT into the design of teaching and learning activities (Johnson and Johnson 2004). It has been argued that the basic design of learning spaces, such as classrooms and lecture theatres, has remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years because people are often unaware of the important relationship between learning spaces and the affordances they provide for teaching and learning activities (Jamieson 2003). This paper addresses how different learning spaces affect teaching and learning experiences and why institutions which are looking to expand and build new campus spaces, or rebuild and redesign existing spaces, need to rethink the type of virtual and physical teaching and learning environments they require for quality student learning.