DESIGNING THE NEXT GENERATION OF CLASSROOMS: A NEW MODEL FOR COLLABORATION TO FACILITATE THE DESIGN OF 21ST CENTURY LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

The design of traditional classrooms has not changed significantly despite the growth of new educational pedagogies and technologies. Most K-12 educational institutions in the United States offer online courses/spaces along with formal, physical classrooms and many integrate diverse mobile devices within the classroom. These changes demand a new vision of learning environments for delivering education in the 21st century. Educators must learn to manage changes occurring in the curricula, as well as in the physical formal/informal classrooms; but lack the design background. They depend on the architects/designers to help them in designing the next generation of classrooms. Architects/designers have insufficient knowledge of new educational pedagogies, and need the support of the educators in understanding these pedagogical changes.

In this paper the authors advocate collaborative design projects between architects/designers and educators to explore pedagogical, technological and spatial changes so that together, they can design the next generation of classrooms to benefit both learners and the educators. These authors (an architectural design educator and a learning technology design expert) independently conducted studies with their graduate students to understand how to serve the educators in developing the next generation of classrooms. The design educator worked with her students to research new educational pedagogies/technologies to understand how they are changing the learning environments. The learning technology design educator observed a newly designed education facility at her institution to understand how students use new technologies and the learning environments. The authors draw on their collective data to develop a framework for thinking about how to design/change learning environments to support students’ learning/engagement across different contexts.

During their data analysis, it was evident to both authors that a collaborative approach between architects, designers and educators is needed to develop the next generation of classrooms. Their preliminary findings suggest that a more nuanced approach to examining learning environments by examining students’ learning ecologies (Barron, 2006) and mobility across formal and informal spaces can allow educators in managing changes and better engage students in lifelong learning.

Based on their findings, these authors suggest a new model for architects/designers and educators where they collectively observe/examine how students use:
1) formal/informal learning environments,
2) new technologies and mobile devices, and
3) draw upon educators’ knowledge of new educational pedagogies/technologies and designers’ knowledge of environment-behavior design to understand changes needed in each institution.

Through this collective effort they can better understand the impact of changing pedagogies, technologies, devices, and learning environments on students’ learning outcomes. This paper documents authors’ research process, data collection and analysis methods and findings