Report from the Recipients of the 2012 Perry Chapman Prize Research on Learning Space Design: Present State, Future Directions by Susan Painter, Janice Fournier, Caryn Grape, Phyllis Grummon, Jill Morelli, Susan Whitmer, and Joseph Cevetello Research on Learning Space Design: Present State, Future Directions | Report from the Recipients of the 2012 Perry Chapman Prize ii Research on Learning Space Design: Present State, Future Directions by Susan Painter, Janice Fournier, Caryn Grape, Phyllis Grummon, Jill Morelli, Susan Whitmer, and Joseph Cevetello Society for College and University Planning www.scup.org © 2013 by the Society for College and University Planning All rights reserved. Published 2013. ISBN 978-1-937724-17-7 ABOUT THE SOCIETY FOR COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY ABOUT THE PERRY CHapMAN PRIZE PLANNING (SCUP) The Hideo Sasaki Foundation, under the auspices of the Society The Society for College and University Planning is a community for College and University Planning (SCUP), seeks to honor the of higher education planning professionals that provides its intellectual contributions of M. Perry Chapman. members with the knowledge and resources to establish and achieve institutional planning goals within the context of best As the 2008 recipient of SCUP’s K. C. Parsons Founders’ practices and emerging trends. For more information, visit www. Award for Distinguished Achievement in Higher Education scup.org. Planning, Chapman was committed to developing and sharing knowledge to advance integrated planning and interdisciplinary WHat is IntEgratED PLanning? collaboration in higher education. Integrated planning is the linking of vision, priorities, people, and the physical institution in a flexible system of evaluation, decision- Chapman’s influence on campus planning and design spanned making and action. It shapes and guides the entire organization more than four decades. He affected colleagues, institutions, as it evolves over time and within its community. firms, and community organizations through his insight, mentoring, writing, and speaking. He raised the standard of ABOUT THE HIDEO SasaKI FOUNDATION planning theory through research and analysis of the relationship between the campus as a place and its impact on learning and The mission of the Hideo Sasaki Foundation is to support community. inquiry, research, and continuing education in planning and design, with an emphasis on the value of collaboration between In honor of Perry Chapman’s passion for developing and sharing disciplines. The Foundation currently sponsors the annual Boston knowledge and his commitment to integrated planning and Architectural College Distinguished Visiting Critic (DVC). The interdisciplinary collaboration a prize of $10,000 will be awarded DVC conducts an advanced studio for those seeking to study annually from 2012 through 2016. This prize funds research with highly accomplished design practitioners. The Hideo Sasaki in the planning and design of institutions of higher education. Foundation is funded by a trust established by Sasaki Associates, The prize is intended to further the research, development, Inc. and family, friends, and colleagues of Hideo Sasaki. and dissemination of emerging knowledge to improve campus environments in support of their institution’s mission. SCUP is grateful to The Hideo Sasaki Foundation for its support of The Perry Chapman Prize. For more information, visit www. scup.org/perrychapman. WWW.SCUP.ORG/PERRYCHAPMAN Research on Learning Space Design: Present State, Future Directions | Report from the Recipients of the 2012 Perry Chapman Prize iii CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE ..........................................4 VI. WHAT WE FOUND: CaMPUS DESIGN AND LEARNING OUTCOMES ...............19 Research Context Overview Goals of the Project Student Engagement and Recruitment Recruitment and Retention II. OUR AppROACH .....................................................................6 Engagement and Community Defining Learning Spaces Landscape and Walkability III. DESIGN METHODOLOGIES: Sustainability STATE OF THE FIELD ............................................................7 VII. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Design CREATING PERspECTIVE IN THE FIELD OF LEARNING SpaCE DESIGN RESEARCH ......................26 Case-Study and Anecdotal Studies Conceptual Analysis VIII. LEARNING SpaCE DESIGN RESEARCH: WHAT HaVE WE LEARNED aND WHERE ARE WE GOING? ..........................................28 IV. FORMAL LEARNING SpaCES: WHAT HaVE WE LEARNED? ..................................................8 Improve Learning Space Design Research Methods Establish an Agreed-Upon Taxonomy Defining Space of Learning Space Establish Broader Research Targets Research Results: Formal Learning Environments Conduct Longitudinal Research Benchmark Research Establish Measures of Behavior Classroom Design, Furniture, and Flexibility Strive to Answer the Fundamental Questions: What is Learning and How is it Evaluated? V. INFORMAL LEARNING SpaCES: WHAT HaVE WE LEARNED? ................................................13 MOVING FORwaRD .....................................................................31 Defining Space ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...............................................................31 Research Results: Informal Learning Environments Libraries as Informal Learning Spaces Social Learning Spaces REFERENCES CITED ...................................................................32 Corridors, Mobility, and Incidental Spaces REFERENCES CONSULTED ........................................................35 AppENDIX A: EVALUATION FORM ............................................36 AppENDIX B: AUTHOR AFFILIATIONS .....................................37 WWW.SCUP.ORG/PERRYCHAPMAN Research on Learning Space Design: Present State, Future Directions | Report from the Recipients of the 2012 Perry Chapman Prize 4 I. INTRODUCTION AND PURPOSE RESEARCH CONTEXT The question of how the physical environment affects In the current climate of rapidly rising higher education teaching and learning is rooted in the connections between costs and increasing concern about the need to support architecture, design, and psychology. Professionals and stronger retention and graduation rates, focus has turned to laypeople alike may well ask why we don’t already understand emerging pedagogies and the development of new templates which factors in the built or natural environment can be for learning spaces. In response, planners, architects, and used to encourage or produce the specific behaviors, such as institutions are seeking to establish a body of knowledge that collaboration and learning, that are of interest to classroom will guide the design, remodel, and use of new and existing designers, teachers, and administrators. Why hasn’t the learning spaces. Parallel to this is an increasingly urgent need cross-disciplinary field of psychology and design already to evaluate these learning spaces by developing research to yielded those answers? determine whether and how they fulfill their purposes. If you follow the paper trail of the initial, highly optimistic Across the world, facilities staff, learning specialists, connections made between psychology and architecture/ academic researchers, architects, and designers have design in the early 1950s–early 1970s, you will clearly launched a broad range of investigations to address the see scholars’ anticipation that psychology could supply questions being raised by the new research on learning space architects and designers with specific information about design. These run the gamut from a few rigorously designed, the way people respond to the physical environment. This conducted, and analyzed research projects to more anecdotal body of information could, it was thought, serve almost descriptions of experiments and projects undertaken to test as a set of specifications that could be used directly in the specific classroom configurations. In addition, there are a design process, much as information about necessary light number of articles that review the existing literature and levels is used to design a building’s lighting. A number of provide more philosophical approaches for how teaching and new journals, conferences, and symposia were launched to learning activities can be effectively housed and deployed. provide a home for this new cross-disciplinary field, and a significant amount of scholarly activity was undertaken Although several hundred articles and a number of books on during the late 1960s through the 1970s. The new discipline these topics had been written by the fall of 2012, the field is of Environmental Psychology was established, and the still at an early stage of development. A first step in creating Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) came value from this existing body of work is to gather, summarize into being. and evaluate how far the field has come in identifying the elements that will allow us to thoughtfully design learning Over the next 10 years, however, it became clear that spaces and evaluate their impact. This was the purpose of psychology research paradigms were not set up to respond the project being reported in this paper: a literature review to the specific questions posed by the architecture, design, undertaken by a small group of researchers and campus and planning professions and the kind of immediately architects/planners who had applied for and been awarded applicable information these disciplines were seeking was not a grant from