Abstract:

For academic leaders wishing to make transformative change in their institutional approach to teaching and learning, the challenge goes beyond the usual issues of staff training and organisational culture. There is often the substantial challenge of creating the correct learning environments to support new ways of teaching and learning.

Institutions embarking on the journey of making significant changes to their built environment and associated ICT infrastructure can face many challenges. From the institution seeking to envision a completely new campus, considering what that should include and perhaps more importantly, what it should not include, to the institutions seeking to make small physical changes, it is essential that academic leaders engage with their design team, estates and ICT colleagues to create a clear and understandable vision, allowing all parties to focus on the end product.

At Abertay University the current academic leadership inherited an estate that remained largely unchanged since the 1970s, with the exception of a new library and learning resource centre that is itself now approaching 20 years of use. Following an appraisal that considered options as radical as wholesale relocation of our campus, the University settled on a remodelling of the existing campus and has set about a period of refurbishment and alteration of the campus to meet the needs of academic staff and learners now an in the future.

For academic colleagues construction work can have a long gestation period that may not be compatible with the pace of educational delivery changes. This can be a frustrating process with cost and technical barriers that may prevent new ideas developing and retard the momentum necessary to effect change.

An explanation of the standardised approach to project development that we follow at Abertay will afford some insight for those unfamiliar with the key stages essential in successful projects. This will hopefully offer an insight into construction works that will aid those who have had limited involvement in projects. Our processes are based on industry standards and are fully scalable. We believe this makes them suited to the full range of projects that might be undertaken by an institution.

Our presentation will examine the processes that we have gone through as a University to develop and implement projects, both large and small, and explain the learning we have gone through in developing the estate. We will provide some insight into the post project evaluation processes that we utilise to capture the learning as well as identifying areas where we hope to improve on our current practice.

The Abertay campus is small and compact with a mix of building types. Radical remodelling has been possible to parts of the campus but has presented an extremely complex logistical challenge. We will explain our approach to the planning and implementation of projects and also how we have engaged the wider university community in relation to our projects.

Perceptions of success are very subjective depending on individuals’ experience and the extent to which they will benefit from a project. Managing the aspirations and expectations of colleagues who are disrupted by works but ultimately will not benefit from them directly can be critical to overall success and we will share our experience in this regard.

Keywords:

Learning spaces.