More on evaluation

The final JISC report “Study of effective evaluation models & practices for technology supported physical learning spaces” has now been published, can be accessed here. Undertaken by the LSRI at the University of Nottingham, the research found that existing evaluations were not, to put it politely, much to write home about:

Our initial investigations showed that although institutions were keen to advertise new or innovative learning spaces, the practice of evaluating such spaces was not made readily visible and was thus harder to identify or track. A key finding to emerge from the study was that if evaluations were undertaken they occurred as part of an internal institutional process, typically prompted as part of a student satisfaction survey, of which the outputs were not ordinarily deemed to be for external consumption. This has limited the extent to which knowledge sharing about learning spaces has been promoted across the whole educational community.

The study suggests that HE and FE need to think harder about how to evaluate physical learning spaces, so as to more clearly assess how they satisfy design intentions and teaching and learning needs. They also propose a conceptual Framework for Evaluating Learning Spaces (FELS), aiming to offer a common vocabulary for evaluation which different institutions could test. And they have started a Learning Spaces social networking site at spacesforlearning.ning.com.

Image from student project Minimum Conditions for Creativity LondonMet University

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