IF YOU BUILD IT, WILL THEY COME? SUPPORTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF INNOVATIVE TEACHING IN AN INNOVATIVE TEACHING SPACE

This work charts the experiences of a Director of Learning and Teaching and a Head of Educational Technology through the process of building an innovative teaching space and the subsequent embedding of the space into curriculum and practice. Beginning with an exploratory design phase through to building, implementation and finally the challenge of embedding the technology into teaching practice across a university, this narrative provides a unique insight into the development of the Liverpool Hope University Learning Lab.

By exploring emerging wireless presentation and collaboration technologies, we have created an innovative teaching space that affords both students and teaching staff to collaborate in exciting new ways. By utilising bring your own device (BYOD) methodologies, digital artefacts can be created and shared in a seamless and open workflow that maximises routes to participation in the classroom environment. By pairing these technologies with an adaptable learning space and ‘old school’ whiteboard technology, the Learning Lab is a teaching space in which group-oriented active learning and innovation is promoted by de-emphasising the potential for transmissive modes of teaching.

The challenges of building the space are outlined, but the emphasis of this work lies with the approaches to supporting the development of the innovative teaching practice that ideally comes with innovative spaces. We propose that supporting the emergence of innovative practice, requires a level of support that transcends mere training in the use of technology and that assumptions around practitioner use of technology naturally aligning with the technological potential of learning environments is a common (Laurillard 2008) yet fatal flaw in the embedding of technology into practice. We present real critical narratives from the classroom that represent the ‘state-of-the-actual’ (Selwyn 2010) in Higher Education (HE) teaching practice and propose methodologies that support innovation in teaching as alongside innovation in technology.

References:
[1] Laurillard, D., 2008. Digital technologies and their role in achieving our ambitions for education, Available at: http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/628/.
[2] Selwyn, N., 2010. Looking beyond learning: notes towards the critical study of educational technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26(1), pp.65–73. Available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2009.00338.x [Accessed January 11, 2014].