Spaces for Engaging, Experiential, Collaborative Learning in Higher Education

A key challenge for higher education institutions around the world is to provide active and engaging learning encounters for a new generation of students to develop their skills for work in a rapidly changing environment. Typically, these students are accustomed to being digitally connected 24/7 and they have real-time access to truly global learning resources. The challenge facing higher education providers is how to create active and engaging learning encounters within an aging stock of infrastructure by a generation of traditional academics, both of which generally foster teacher-led instruction.

In considering this conundrum, this chapter is viewed through two lenses: (1) a teacher practising problem-based learning (PBL) for more than 20 years and (2) an educational planner who designs learning spaces. Together the paper explores the challenges of pedagogy and design, some disruptors that are making change imperative and, specifically, the opportunities available in both pedagogy and design to create new learning activities and spaces. The paper argues that curricula need to be dominated by collaborative investigation and problem solving in spaces that encourage and afford such activity.