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ON CAMPUS
' The Place ' photos by Peter Bennetts
The Place The Place
Education Central
The Place
explains.“ Through our TEAL room, we are really exploring what is possible as well as looking at how we can allow students to take more ownership of their learning and work together in groups.
“ The teacher or lecturer is able to come in and look at any little pod of students and see what they’ re doing and then [ project ] it up around the walls and say:‘ Look what they’ re doing here in this group – this looks really spectacular what they’ ve done.’”
Even the lecture rooms are designed with collaboration – rather than simply oration – in mind.
Instead of just having a lecture room with tightly packed seating on a steep gradient, the rise is much gentler, thereby creating width between work benches. Students are able to move and swivel in what Alloway describes as a“ collaborative lecture theatre”.
In order to maximise the investment in the new building’ s technological and pedagogical capabilities, staff training has had to be similarly rethought.
“ There is professional development for staff not to just stand and deliver and be a talking head but to understand that a big lecture can be converted into a collaboration interspersed with lecture,” Alloway says.
“ Everyone can swing around and it’ s actually the architecture that allows you to do that, rather than turning around and breaking your neck looking to a vastly different gradient level to what you are on.”
Of course most importantly – as Alloway points out – it is paying dividends for the students.
“ I didn’ t want to have just bought into my own rhetoric,” she says.“ So I’ ve been through multiple times and spoken to students and asked how it’ s going and they’ ve said,‘ We love it. We just want to be here. We meet our friends here.’”
CLASSROOMS STUDENTS HELP CREATE This notion of creating spaces that will not only attract students but encourage them to feel a sense of ownership of the space was one of the central motivations behind another ambitious campus project.
Whilst the concept of the flipped classroom is one that has been gaining popularity in recent times, UNSW was keen to ensure its new $ 2.8 million business school – based around the model – was not just a pedagogical change, but a beacon to which its students would flock.
Dubbed‘ The Place’ and designed by the firm Woods Bagot, the most striking feature about the school’ s layout is initially the painted-ribbon motif that runs continuously through the space, changing colour as it weaves its way through the building along walls, floors and ceilings.
But more importantly its open layout and focus on collaborative workspaces – once again incorporating leading technologies and the potential they provide – is aimed at fostering a collegiate environment to produce graduates ready to work in modern, teambased environments.
“ So what happens in The Place is that people would have already got a lot of the knowledge and content base from the digital experiences of the flipped classroom element,” says the school’ s dean, professor Chris Styles.
“ What they are doing is they are coming in to apply that social learning in groups, or pod-based learning if you like – so small groups where they are provided with very practical application exercises which are performed [ in a space specifically ] designed to facilitate that kind of learning.”
In a similar move to that JCU adopted, the learning spaces are malleable and can be reconfigured easily to suit the specific needs of any particular class or teaching style.
“ The way it is set up, you go in and around the walls you have these tables with six to eight students sitting around these tables – nearby there is a large screen that can be used for developing representations or reports or spreadsheets or whatever it might be, so that everyone can work together.
“ Then you have a facilitator, rather than a lecturer, who is setting up the exercise, walking around the room, advising, helping, guiding students.”
In a move UNSW’ s business students have embraced, The Place is open and accessible 24 hours a day – once again, in effect, handing ownership of the space to the students it is intended to serve.
“ With so many students being able to live on campus – which has already made the whole campus very vibrant – this is another dimension to that where students can come in as they need or are wanting to,” Styles says.“ The students want to come, I think that’ s a big part of it. I mean you have to ask yourself,‘ Where am I going to be most creative or most innovative or come up with great ideas?’ I think the space and the environment you’ re in have a lot to do with that so if you are in a very creative vibrant innovative space you’ re going to come out with an innovative idea.” ■
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