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Systematic efforts to study students' use of informal learning spaces are crucial for determining how, when and why students use such spaces. This case study provides an example of an effort to evaluate an informal learning space on the basis of students' usage of the space and the features within the space.

Use of heatmap camera technology and a semi-structured interview with a supervisor of an informal learning space supported the mixed-methods evaluation of the space.

Findings from both the heatmap outputs and semi-structured interview suggested that students' use of the informal learning space is limited due to the location of the space on campus and circumstances surrounding students' day-to-day schedules and needs.

Findings from both the heatmap outputs and semi-structured interview suggested that students' use of the informal learning space is limited due to the location of the space on campus and circumstances surrounding students' day-to-day schedules and needs. These findings are actively contributing to the authors’ institution’s efforts surrounding planning, funding and design of other informal learning spaces on campus.

While most research on instructors' and students' use of space has taken place in formal classrooms, some higher education scholars have explored ways in which college and university students use informal spaces around their campuses (e.g. Harrop and Turpin, 2013; Ramu et al., 2022). Given the extensive time students spend on their campuses outside of formal class meetings (Deepwell and Malik, 2008), higher education institutions must take measures to better understand how their students use informal learning spaces to allocate resources toward the optimization of such spaces. This mixed-methods case study advances the emerging global discussion on how, when and why students use informal learning spaces.

Physical environments, especially the sound environments of ILSs on a university campus, have become increasingly important in satisfying the diverse needs of students. Poor sound environments are widely acknowledged to lead to inefficient and underutilised spaces and to negatively influence students' learning outcomes. This study proposes two hypotheses to explore whether students' sound environment perceptions are related to their individual characteristics and whether students' preferences for the type of ILS are related to their sound environment sensitivities.

An investigation through a questionnaire survey has been conducted on both students' individual characteristics affecting their sound environment perceptions in informal learning spaces (ILSs) of a university campus and their sensitivities to the sound environments in ILSs affecting their preferences for the type of ILSs.

The research findings indicate that students' sound environment perceptions are associated with some of their individual characteristics. In addition, the results show that students' sound environment sensitivities affect their preferences for the type of ILS they occupy.

This study could help architects and managers of university learning spaces to provide better sound environments for students, thereby improving their learning outcomes. The article contributes valuable insights into the correlation between students' individual characteristics, sound environment perceptions and preferences for ILSs. The research findings add to the existing knowledge in this field and offer practical implications for enhancing design and management of university learning environments.

This paper investigates the moderating-mediation roles of synchronous and asynchronous learning, as well as virtual self-efficacy between digital learning space experience and continuous use among learners in Ghanaian institutions of higher learning.

A convenience sampling technique was used in the selection of 604 students who answered questions on digital learning space experience, synchronous and asynchronous learning, virtual self-efficacy and learner continuous use within the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. The study employed regression analysis to measure the hypothesized paths.

The findings show that asynchronous learning partially mediates between digital learning space experience and learner continuous use, but the mediating effect of synchronous learning between digital learning space experience and learner continuous use was not significant. Further, virtual self-efficacy significantly moderates the mediated relationship between asynchronous learning and learner continuous use, but the moderated mediated role of synchronous learning was not established in the study.

Generalization of the study findings is limited due to the sampling scope, which was restricted to students of IHL in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana.

In this research, the academic scope of digital transformation was expanded from both digital structure elements and psychological perspectives within the domain of higher education literature.

This paper aims to explore contribution of informal learning space - Research Cafe - to enrich research learning experiences of graduate students. Developing strong research skills among graduate students is a prime focus of higher education around the world. Thereby, universities are striving to maximise opportunities that can foster and enrich students’ learning experiences of research; however, the focus is mostly confined to formal opportunities such as research method courses and thesis writing. The provision of informal learning spaces has been recognised as a useful tool for fostering research learning experiences of graduates. This reflective paper is among a few focusing on a model of student-led informal learning space for enriching research experiences in higher education in the context of Pakistan.

This paper uses a reflective approach to generate a metalogue. The research experiences shared by the participants were further reflected by the authors after each research café session. The authors then shared their collective metacognitive reflections with each other, generating a metalogue, which was used as the data set. The metalogue was analysed thematically to generate themes.

Findings reveal that the research café is an informal space to promote academic socialisation by providing a conducive environment, peer support and informal supervision opportunities to foster the research learning experiences of graduate students. Importantly, the model presented in this paper provides a complimentary pathway for boosting learning experiences.

This paper would be useful for graduate students, faculty and university manager to acknowledge the potential of informal learning spaces in promoting research learning experiences. This paper highlights opportunities for replication, and further empirical research are needed to establish the efficacy of research café.

This study contributes to the global debate about graduate research learning experiences through informal learning space, which is yet to be explored, particularly in developing contexts like Pakistan. The idea of the research café is original, as it was conceived keeping in consideration the contextual and cultural aspects. The methodology used in this paper was specifically derived which can be replicated by other researchers.

This article conceptualizes essential keys to the future of peer reference in academic libraries as extrapolated through the dual lenses of academic library history in the United States of America and recent experiences of a peer program with prospective and actual out-of-the-building experiences.

A 30,000-foot historical view of the dispositions of space in academic library buildings, collections, spaces, technology and reference provision is integrated with a description of the responses and insights of a peer reference program during the program's prospective and actual out-of-the-building experiences. These components are then analyzed to extrapolate keys to peer reference provision in any learning environment.

Peer reference is a natural extension of the Learning Commons model as developed in many academic libraries. To find optimal success in leveraging the benefits of peer-to-peer learning, program coordinators should keep in mind the social aspects of peer learning and intentionally articulate a framework for service delivery that best matches the modalities of providers, patrons and the information environment. In reviewing training and service practices, coordinators should be particularly on guard for any bias due to traditional reliance on the affordances of a library building and/or physical service point.

This article founds its conclusions in regard to the future of peer reference by contextualizing the evolution and future of such programs in the wider historical context of academic library dispositions of space in support of learning. It proposes a conceptual framework for intentionally matching the modalities of providers, patrons and the information environment.

This chapter describes public space exploration services’ business goals, purpose, and strategy. It reinforces space exploration organizations’ fundamental bureaucratic administrative culture (Tier 1). The authors describe the influence that political appointees as leaders may play in shaping public sector cultures. Next, the public service culture (Tier 2) is deconstructed, and each of the five layers is described in detail. Additionally, the authors explain why focusing on the beliefs layer is the dominant layer and the essential starting point for analysis in space exploration cultures. Next, the chapter outlines the landscape of external influencing cultures (Tier 3) in the space exploration landscape. Finally, the potential value and challenges of developing internal KLC cultures are explored.

The contemporary focus on extracurricular activities, here the educational incubator environment, accentuates a need to understand what we offer students in terms of the curricular and extracurricular learning environments when situated in the same higher education institution (HEI). Current research points towards breaking down the invisible barriers and silo thinking. In this conceptual study, we apply the Didaktik triangle as a theoretical and conceptual framing to make comparisons of structurally based conditions for curricular and extracurricular entrepreneurship education (EE). We present a framework that helps bridge the ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ questions in the two different learning spaces and, thereby, conjoin educators and consultants in possible pedagogical discussions on how they work with the students. The suggested bridge frames a wider ‘why’ and adds a more holistic and cohesive view of the two different types of settings. Our study contributes to the literature on how to bridge the blurred lines between curricular and extracurricular activities and break down the silos. The framework can act as an inspiration for entrepreneurship educators and practitioners who wish to provide more suitable and sustainable structures and develop a holistic learning environment.

This paper aims to explore how teachers’ choice of text, centering of student voices and collaboration with the community around a language arts curriculum impacted the engagement and learning experiences of 85 11th and 12th-grade refugee background students designated as English language learners.

A qualitative self-study framework that inquired into the assumptions about teaching and learning and the roles as social justice educators framed this narrative paper. Student journaling and teachers’ reflection logs and observations of class dramatization during a lesson unit on the play Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry formed the research text and informed the thematic analysis and findings of this study. The lenses of culturally sustaining pedagogy and a third space helped unpack the vantages of student voice and community engagement in the curriculum.

In a unit whose central text was chosen based on students’ racial and ethnic identities and their interests, they actively engaged in class and role-played as teachers, generating content that fostered their linguistic repertoires and critical discussions in class. Collaboration with community partners boosted the teacher’s agency with the curriculum and created a model of collaboration and learning for the class.

Student voices and community engagement in learning are powerful tools for designing culturally sustaining pedagogies.

This chapter explores the ways in which border imperialism, a concept widely attributed to Harsha Walia (2013), interacts with international postsecondary remote learning contexts to open opportunities to both extend and resist border imperialism. Historical and present contexts of border imperialism centered on Canada are consulted, uncovering a connection between technologies of labor and colonial power dynamics. Both temporal contexts serve to highlight the ways in which technologies of labor create a colonial power dynamic enacted through the usage of borders as imperialist tools. The body of literature concerning border imperialism is then reviewed to discern how remote learning contexts facilitate both resistance to and expansion of border imperialism. It is found that these contexts do support narratives of resistance to bodily racism and temporo-economic imperialism, however, in so doing also support neo-racism and unjust soft power dynamics within internationalization. The opportunities for resistance and expansion of border imperialism are then consolidated in pursuit of an ethical path forward with respect to the usage of new remote learning technologies in the context of internationalization.

School climate strikes are opening spaces of appearance, becoming differently active forms of public pedagogy where new and previously unthought collective climate action is possible. This inquiry contributes to understanding school climate strikes as important forms of climate justice activism by exploring how they work as public pedagogy.

The inquiry process involved poetic inquiry to produce an affective poetic witness statement to an event of school climate strikes, and then a performative enactment of diffractive reading using the poem created. The diffractive reading is used to conceptualise school climate strikes as public pedagogy and move towards an understanding of how school climate strikes work as public pedagogy. Diffused throughout is the question of where the more-than-human fits in public pedagogy and youth climate justice activism.

School climate strikes are dynamic and differently acting (diffracting) public pedagogies that work by open spaces of appearance that enable capacities for collective action in heterogeneous political spaces. Consideration of entanglements and intra-actions between learner, place, knowledge and climate change are productive in understanding how phenomena work as public pedagogy.

This inquiry extends on important considerations in both climate change education and public pedagogy scholarship. It diffuses consideration of the more-than-human throughout the inquiry and enacts a move beyond the humanist limits of existing public pedagogy scholarship by introducing climate intra-action, heterogeneous political spaces and non-conforming learning to an understanding of activist public pedagogies and the educative agent.