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Workshop... Some provacative questions

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Hybrid Campus Workshop

Designing the Hybrid Campus
Architects Philip Parsons and Deepika Ross
January 30-31, 2002

Principles

Learning is fundamentally social
Knowledge is integrated in the life of communities
Learning is an act of membership
Knowledge depends on engagement in practice
Engagement is inseparable from empoperment
Failure to learn is an exclusion from participation

Definition of "Hybrid"
Combine away-from-campus technology-based learning with on-campus community-based learning.

Outline from Morning Presentation
Text from Philip Parsons'morning presentation.

Place and Learning

Eating dinners
Keeping nights
Reading Paradise Lost
John Seely Brown & Paul Duguid's "The Social Life of Information" - the place of misrepresentation

Why bother with a hybrid?

Better learning
More effective development of "social capital" (read Robert Putnam's "Bowling Alone")
Potential to provide real learning community for commuting students
More flexible and responsive to community needs
More targeted and controlled investment in facilities

And speaking of money...

We should be thinking about learning per square foot, not square feet per FTSE student

Seeing the whole campus (the whole system?) as a classroom reveals:

Limitations of net-to-gross concepts of building efficiency; unassignable space is often the most important in building a learning community
State funding mechanisms often obstruct the development of the smart campus
Compartmentalized concepts of efficiency lead to inefficiencies
Locus of decision-making for facilities investment can prevent properly targeted investment

Hybrid concept

Combine away-from-campus tech-based learning with on-campus community-based learning
Let on-line learning reinforce campus-based learning
Let campus-based learning reinforce on-line learning
Allow for multiple learning strategies; broaden and strengthen the concept of learning communities, or communities of practice
Half as much traditional classroom instruction equals (optimistically!) half as much traditional classroom space -
But other spaces will become more important, and classrooms themselves may be different
Focus place-based part of course on interaction: faculty/student, student/student
Provide centralized (and decentralized?) resources for learning
Provide comprehensive student services
Provide work-oriented place-based community
More meaningful education at lower cost
Campus becomes a cherished resource, a real destination, rather than a perfunctory experience, for commuter students
Less frequent visits to campus become more meaningful (and you spend less time in your car!)

Roger Schank's dismissal of the classroom

According to Schank, learning should be:

One third looking at a computer screen (productively, of course)
One third talking in a group
One third making something

How does this fit with the hybrid learning approach?
What questions does it raise about the design of colleges?
Is a school of architecture a good model?

But maybe Schank is wrong...

Symbolism of lectures
Significance of teacher authority
Formal class may be a necessary preliminary to the non-formal learning on a campus

Another group of three:

Thinking, working, socializing

Three building blocks of learning

Are there good and bad places for thinking? What are they?
Is the teaching/learning relationship a master/apprentice relationship, i.e. a work relationship? How is a place of work different from a school?
How can a commuter college make enough space for the social side of learning?
Can hybrid learning help provide a balance of these three modes?
Campus - a high cost machine for learning?

How about a modest-cost focal point for a city-wide learning community?
Primary risk: education as inoculation

Knowledge is made meaningful or meaningless to a great extent by the overall context of its delivery
A dead, sterile or chaotic campus can cancel any benefits offered by technology
Why do elementary schools often provide a so much richer learning environment?

The Campus

A machine for learning; parking and boxes
Dangers of the Corbusier metaphor

Planning as a durable social vision

Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham

Places as the indispensable building blocks of a civil society
The campus as the idealized vision
The reality:

87% of higher education students are commuters

How to make places memorable for commuters?

Community - the easy solution
What kind of community?
The campus as a whole has to generate community

Different versions of community

Heroic 19th century planning vs. palliative or remedial 21st century planning

Only occasionally is there an opportunity to design a campus from scratch, as at American University Cairo - and possibly at Maricopa
Learning from New Urbanism

Density
Mix of Uses
Pedestrian-friendly
Street-level retail
e.g.

Reston Center, Virginia

Learning communities
Learning cities

Campus as city?
City as campus?

Old metaphors for campus planning and design don't fit

Learning per Square Foot is a more useful concept

Classrooms

Emphasis shifts to discussion or event/
demonstration, when the majority of learning is done more effectively elsewhere; shift reduces need for classroom space and increases the need for and significance of other learning spaces
Discussion Rooms

Alternative approaches

Thinking with Things - Workmanlike Settings for Learning

The two most liked classrooms on a college campus

Ceremony and event, large and small scale
Harvard Business School

Design determined by pedagogy

Laptop English Classroom
Academic buildings

Intermediate and public spaces matter more than private space

Intermediate spaces can destroy the chance for casual conversation
Corridors and connections can encourage interaction

Buildings

Few entries, and paths set back from buildings, making them , and the outdoor spaces, less accessible

Campus

A series of boxes, linked by a conveyance system, like an airport, or a complex, multi-layered place
Outdoor rooms - neutral territory
Outdoor rooms
City
Fully interwoven fabric
Planning for increased integration into the larger community, both social and economic

What should be the dominant experience of being on a campus? For students? For faculty?

Office building/workplace
Main street
Neighborhood internet cafŽ
Kinko's
Barnes & Noble
Hotel/conference center
Service center
School

What kinds of spaces best support interaction?
What can we learn from industry?

Time-Warner/AOL
McCann Erikson

Campus as Main Street

Classrooms, faculty offices, adjacent to student services (such as cafes, bookstore, retail)
Mall

Using the familiar as a vehicle for transformation

George Mason University: Johnson Center

Store
Café
Sidewalk
Sustainable design and planning

next: morning activity notes...