Across the Higher Education (HE) sector, factors including increasing student numbers, growing diversification, concerns about students’ mental health and wellbeing, and marketisation, have been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. In response to the challenges faced within the HE environment, university estates teams need to recognise how learning can take place anytime and anywhere and develop radical strategies for student-centred, sustainable campus design. Future approaches to learning need to be dynamic and linked, and weave together formal and informal activities to create a holistic learning experience.
Against this backdrop, Teesside University Professor of Learning and Teaching, Sam Elkington, with Dr. Jill Dickinson (University of Leeds) are convening the ‘Landscapes of Learning for Unknown Futures: Prospects for Space in Higher Education’ Symposia Series in partnership with the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) starting on Wednesday April 26th. This (inter)national symposia series aims to provoke critical debate around the possibilities for new configurations of learning spaces to support decision-making, policy, and practice in developing future landscapes of learning within HE. The concept of ‘learning landscape’ is offered as means of exploring how universities can draw on a spectrum of different learning spaces to reflect changing preferences and incorporate digital technologies.
The Symposia Series brings together leading voices from across the field to encourage critical discussion and debate with a view to generating, encapsulating, and assembling key insights that can inform future decision-making, policy, and practice around landscapes of learning in HE framed through the prism of three thematic lenses: networks, assemblages, and flexibilities, with a separate Symposium dedicated to each. Through providing opportunities for critical discussion and shared learning, the hope is that the Series will encourage and cultivate an ongoing community of practice that will support the development of better understanding around the opportunities for developing learning spaces in terms of their networks, assemblages, and flexibilities.
The Symposia Series is also being offered as an opportunity for modelling, alternative, multimodal strategies for fostering more inclusive, effective, and ongoing dialogue that emerges from and around academic conferences and events. Each of the three Symposia will run primarily face-to-face, hosted by SRHE in London with key components of each Symposium – namely the Keynote, Presentations and Panel Discussions. Each event will also be streamed live to enable a hybrid format and remote engagement. A selection of leading international scholars with recognised expertise in different aspects of HE learning space research have been brought on board with the aim of reviewing the symposia keynote and presentation materials and working with the conveners to produce extended blog accounts by way of a critical response to emergent themes and issues. In addition, Sam and Jill aim to facilitate continued dialogue to bridge each Symposium across the Series through other modes, for example via the use of padlet, blogs, and podcast communications to create a rich tapestry of critical insight and debate that we hope will drive the conversation forwards around the prospects for learning space in HE.
You can register your place on the first ‘Networks’ symposium event here: Landscapes Of Learning For Unknown Futures – Symposium 1: Networks | Society for Research into Higher Education (srhe.ac.uk)
