Not a waste of space – professional development for staff teaching in New Generation Learning Spaces
Australian universities have spent millions of dollars transforming teaching spaces into new generation learning environments. This trend in funding appears set to continue into the future. While a number of projects have focussed on the design and evaluation of spaces, little work has been done on supporting activities, post design, for the staff required to teach in them.
The 'Not a Waste of Space' project aims to design, implement and evaluate a flexible, ‘bite-sized’ ‘just-in-time’ and ‘just-for-me’ professional development approach focused on new generation learning spaces with an accompanying interactive electronic step-by-step institutional implementation “eGuide”. It aims to capitalise positively on the need for staff to respond to the demands that new generation learning spaces place on both teachers and learners in order to maximize student learning and engagement. The outcome will be underpinned by theories of contemporary learning, organisational systems and behavioural economics and be available for easy use, adaptation and contextualisation by universities across the sector.
The project is funded by the Office for Learning and Teaching and will be led by a team from RMIT Univesity and The University of Melbourne. Furthermore, three Australian universities will be invited to trial and evaluate the developed resources.
