PROMOTING INNOVATIVE LEARNING SPACES AT UNIVERSIDAD MIGUEL HERNÁNDEZ. ELCHE. SPAIN. A DESIGN THINKING EXPERIENCE

During the process of the educational change that is taking place in the twenty-first century we witness the rise of a methodological trend that focuses on the importance of space. New methodologies (cooperative learning, transversal skill development, design thinking, learning by doing, use of ICT to produce, project-based learning-ABP, learning and service-ApS projects, intelligent classroom, flipped classroom, etc.) are interrelated with the relevance of the spaces in an outstanding way, both, methodology and space, helping each other in the implementation and in the achievement of measurable improvements on learning and teaching. In this line of research, the University Miguel Hernández in Spain carried out, during the year 2016-17, a series of Design Thinking workshops applied to the challenge "Be the architect of your UMH" in order to contribute to the investigation on the design of educational spaces and innovative ideas for universities. The final goal was to generate a document with the findings provided by the members of the multidisciplinary teams that participated in the workshops, thus proposing ideas for the construction or refurbishing of buildings designed for university education, adapted to those characteristics that the paradigm of renewal and educational innovation of the 21st century demand. This paper summarizes the experience during the workshops and the conclusions referred to formal and informal learning spaces. Many of the outcomes are suitable not only for learning spaces in higher education but also for primary and secondary levels.