An open repository with hundreds of diverse classroom examples is enabling educators at institutions across the country to reimagine and redesign their learning spaces.
More than ever, there is significant interest among learning space designers and planners for inspiration, examples, and practical guidance for effective, innovative, and inclusive learning spaces. Our upcoming session at the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative Annual Meeting introduces the latest iteration of FLEXspace (Flexible Learning Environments eXchange), an open repository of detailed learning environment exemplars that is free for educators. FLEXspace is co-created and led by a community of practitioners, experts, and decision makers dedicated to sharing the best thinking in learning space design for higher education, K–12, libraries, and museums around the world.
From Local Solution to Global Collaboration
In 2013, the 64-campus State University of New York (SUNY) system had a campus planning challenge: how could information, including lessons learned, be more effectively shared across the entire system? FLEXspace was built by SUNY to help streamline this learning space design process. Since that time, the California State University (CSU) system, Foothill-De Anza Community College District, and most recently Penn State have joined FLEXspace's community of national organizations and industry leaders. FLEXspace now has 3,400 members from 1,200 unique institutions across 57 countries, a core team of global experts, and an emerging research and evaluation group from industry and academia.
FLEXspace contains hundreds of learning space designs—formal learning spaces, as well as informal or multipurpose spaces, including multimedia studios, makerspaces, computer labs, innovation and exhibit spaces, small-group huddle areas, and even transitional and outdoor spaces. The collection contains images, videos, floorplans, and detailed specifications based on three taxonomies: architecture and furnishings, learning and assessment activities, and AV/IT technologies supported in each space. These resources facilitate collaboration between facilities management, IT departments, library staff, faculty members, academic technology groups, and campus architects and interior designers.
A Go-To Resource for Learning Space Innovation
The FLEXspace vision is a free "one-stop shop" to help campuses plan, design, build, assess, document, and research learning spaces. FLEXspace has optimized its usability and value through a custom, mobile-friendly platform that enables members to find inspiration and guidance by taking "virtual field trips" to campuses around the world. It also enables members to add their own spaces and create a digital campus portfolio to document and showcase innovative designs, or create a cost-effective classroom directory of all spaces.
What's New in FLEXspace 2.0?
In the summer of 2018, a new "create a space" template was rolled out, enabling easy upload of campus images with detailed attributes and stories of impact. The template also allows users to add collaborators to co-edit space details. For example, a classroom technologist can upload a space, and later a facilities specialist is able to add information about room size, ceiling, flooring, electrical, and other physical space details. Faculty members teaching in the space can detail learning activities, pedagogical approaches, and research outcomes. And designers can add the rationale behind the layout, finishes and furniture choices. These new team collaboration capabilities are game changers—they advance the FLEXspace vision as an open resource created by educators, for educators.
And just in time for the ELI Annual Meeting in Anaheim, FLEXspace is launching features to help the community and the collection grow:
- A new Toolkit enables sharing of tools and templates for planning, design, and evaluation, plus research protocols and findings. Imagine having the opportunity to share data sets, instruments, and methodologies and get advice from how-to articles written by industry experts!
- New curated galleries allow the FLEXspace core team and guest editors to showcase exemplar spaces, provide suggested toolkit resources, and help bridge research and practice. The galleries are created in response to community needs around contemporary topics.
- An expanded community forum and membership directory encourages member discussions and valuable connections.
Our ELI breakout session will feature discussion about innovative spaces from around the world, learning space research, and the relevancy of FLEXspace to support planning, design, research, and collaboration in a global context. The team will guide a hands-on exploration of the collection and new features, with opportunities to use the template to easily upload spaces and toolkit resources. Participants will also learn how to use FLEXspace and other tools to assess learning spaces, prioritize projects, build consensus, improve stakeholder engagement, inform designs, and support end users after implementation.
Join the FLEXspace Community
The FLEXspace team is eager to engage and expand this community of practice by growing the collection of learning space examples, research findings, and other resources to provide high value to the broader academic community. We eagerly seek your input to continuously improve the interface and tagging taxonomies, and we strongly encourage EDUCAUSE members to actively participate and contribute to the FLEXspace initiative. Learn more, login and start browsing today at flexspace.org. And follow us on Twitter @FLEXspaceorg!
Rebecca Frazee is Manager of the FLEXspace initiative and is a faculty member in the Learning Design and Technology program at San Diego State University in the School of Journalism and Media Studies.
Lisa Stephens is Assistant Dean of the University of Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Senior Strategist of SUNY System Academic Innovation.
© 2019 Rebecca Frazee and Lisa Stephens. The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 International License.