Page 9 - Campus Technology, October/November 2018

LEARNING SPACES
“Instructional space is often shared by many instructors who teach many different disciplines in many different styles, so it’s natural to work together across fields to develop shared solutions to problems with those spaces.”
— Adam Maksl, Indiana University
es. Without leaving the tiny house, students can flow from group study to formal instruction to consultation with a professor to post-class decompressing, all in one space. The faculty also proposed a natural aesthetic by designing ample windows to allow for sunlight and views of the out- side. “We pushed ourselves to design without considering cost or feasibility,” Associate Professor of English and Senior Mosaic Fellow Andy Buchenot explained, “but by the end [of the symposium] we found that the principles
importantly, the fellows’ designs and thinking about space reaffirmed work that the Learning Spaces team is already engaged in. Many concepts from the fellows’ designs have parallels in current IU projects, so our space designers saw the fellows’ work as validation that they were on target with addressing current and future faculty needs.
One takeaway from the symposium was recognizing the value of engaging faculty in conversations about space that can occur before we even conceive of spaces. Such broad-
er, more conceptual conversations about space allow for greater cre- ativity in considering what our learn- ing spaces can and should be. For example, the tiny house design allowed the design team to think more about possible connections between formal and informal learn- ing spaces. The conversations from
the event and the Symposium Summary document have already served as a source of inspiration for current and new projects.
Another takeaway was the need to involve different disci- plines in the design of classroom spaces. As Mosaic Fel- low Adam Maksl, associate professor of journalism, put it: “Instructional space is often shared by many instructors who teach many different disciplines in many different
styles, so it’s natural to work together across fields to develop shared solutions to problems with those spaces.” By bringing together instructors with different disciplines, we can design classrooms that support a wider variety of instructional needs.
There are several ways we plan to build on the Mosaic Design Symposium’s successful outcomes. In early October 2018, the Mosaic fellows who participated in this year’s symposium will be invited to present their ideas to key stake- holders in classroom design, including space planners, architects, interior designers and learning space design engineers. The Learning Spaces team continues to share the Symposium Summary document with different stake- holders for the purposes of incrementally including design ideas into a variety of new spaces. The Mosaic Initiative plans to hold a similar event with undergraduate students this academic year, bringing student ideas to both classroom space and informal learning spaces. And finally, the Mosaic Initiative will hold the Design Symposium event again next year, inviting all IU faculty to participate with the aim to broaden our conversation and come up with new future classroom designs to implement across the university.
Tracey Birdwell is program director for the Mosaic Initia- tive at Indiana University. Julie Johnston is the director of Learning Spaces for Indiana University.
animating our infeasible design could be applied to existing learning spaces as well.”
The classroom designs that the Mosaic fellows generated during the symposium served as valuable inspiration and feedback for the Learning Spaces team. The fellows shared new ideas and approaches to design concepts and did so from a faculty perspective — bringing ideas to the fore that only those who teach in the space can produce. Just as
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | October/November 2018