No abstract

To date, learning spaces in higher education have been designed with little engagement on the part of their end-users. In this paper, we present the results of a research conducted in a UK University, which aimed to understand how students and teachers conceptualise learning spaces, if they are given the opportunity to do so. A number of these end-users were involved in creative design workshops. During these workshops, participants were encouraged to critique a space prototype (the 'Cube') and to redesign it according to their own ideas and vision of an optimal learning space. Findings suggest that an active involvement of end-users in space design endows these users with powers of reflection on the pedagogical process, which can usefully be harnessed for the actual creation and innovation of learning spaces.

No abstract

No abstract

This paper explores the notion of impact in the context of academic development programs and considers how it can be described and understood. We argue that impact has a range of meanings and academic development programs such as graduate certificates have a broad group of stakeholders and hence the impact is different for each group depending on how the program aims and objectives are defined and understood. In finding a way through the difficulties of evaluating impact in academic development we point to the importance of clearly conceptualizing the notion of impact, a careful identification of the assumptions underpinning any program and an understanding of who academic development will benefit and how. We suggest that impact in academic development cannot be understood without taking account of the range of possible impacts and the difficulty of attributing simple cause and effect to a complex environment