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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the reasons and drivers for academic libraries affecting university strategy with regards to shaping and developing learning spaces in response to changing pedagogic behaviours.

A review of available literature within the context of academic libraries and their position to influence and lead institutional strategic change. This theory and practice is addressed and evidenced by four case studies of university libraries in the UK.

Many UK academic libraries find themselves able to lead on and influence their institution's strategic direction with regards to teaching, learning and research. This is particularly the case in the design and development of learning spaces within the university. Academic libraries are in a unique position within a university with a view to observing student behaviours, being responsive to ever changing demands from academics and students, spotting trends and benchmarking against comparative institutions. These practices make it possible for academic libraries to advise, guide and lead on teaching and learning strategy and lead on learning spaces developments within their institutions.

Academic libraries can use existing quality assurance, responsiveness and benchmarking frameworks to influence university strategy and decision making.

This paper focuses on the concept of academic libraries influencing change, rather than responding to change, within their university. The case studies provide examples of where this has been the case, and suggest ways and frameworks which can be adopted by other academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore issues, approaches and challenges in providing strategic direction to university libraries on developing their physical space in what is increasingly a digital age. A key aspect of the work is to explore how university libraries and their senior staff can widen libraries’ role to inform the strategic direction of formal and informal learning spaces across the institution.

Research and perspectives from across the world provide the context for the study. A single site case study based at Loughborough University in the UK is explored to demonstrate how strategy for university library space is developed. The case study also provides an example of how a university library has extended its influence on other informal learning spaces.

University library physical space has an important role in learning, teaching and research, despite the increase in digital information provision. For effective strategy, information and evidence needs to be collected from a wide range of sources. The experience and skills that university libraries have developed in managing learning spaces can be transferred to learning spaces elsewhere in the university.

This is a single site case study.

The case study provides approaches and ideas that can be applied by university libraries in the strategic development of learning spaces.

The paper provides an innovative and informed insight into how university libraries can influence learning and teaching spaces across university campus/site. Further research would be valuable to identify practice more widely. Surveying, from a library perspective, university and university estate, management strategies for content relating to libraries and formal and informal spaces across the institution and what is going on/being planned in this area would further progress the debate.

The purpose of this case study is to describe the space transformation of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library (HKUST Library) into a learning commons and how learning activities have been substantially multiplied by engaging academic and supporting units. This experience is used to posit a number of anticipated directions for library space planning.

This paper focuses on the design elements of the learning commons and how these elements have created an effective platform for a variety of learning activities. It outlines an assessment study on how students liked the transformed space and viewed its added values.

In the digital era, academic libraries can be transformed for new, effective and collaborative use. By integrating technology and flexible design, the new space excites existing scholars and attracts a broad range of new users. Students, faculty and administrators react positively to the new space, as it offers effective learning ambience. By engaging and co-creating with university partners, the new space functions as an active facilitator of learning – a hub that supports interaction and an effective platform to support pedagogy towards team projects, multimedia work and whole-person development. Future library spaces need to exhibit characteristics tailored to various user groups and their specific usage needs.

The experience of the HKUST library will have broader implications for other academic libraries embracing their mission-critical nature and assets. It shows that libraries can embrace challenges in the digital and virtual world by creative and innovative use of their physical space.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on connecting recent conceptualizations of learning space design in management education by examining interior building and classroom design.

This study used mixed methods research: external benchmarking with same industry institutions (n=5) and two surveys of students (n=131) and faculty members (n=38).

The process helped to envision how a business school could improve by adapting design aspects from industry peers, understanding the needs of students and faculty, and incorporating new teaching methods and instructional technologies to inform learning space solutions.

The small number of external benchmarking partners may make the findings more applicable to the institutional type examined. Yet, the findings and the mixed methods research have implications for learning space design more broadly.

With the business school building boom, the external architecture of new buildings appears to garner much of the attention. However, the researchers believe that the real impact of new business schools is the centrality of interior learning space design and technology.

This paper uses a mixed methods research approach to examine learning space theory and research in relation to a particular business school’s efforts to use this knowledge to design learning spaces in a new building.

This paper seeks to explore how workers engage in informal online communities for work‐learning. Although online communities may facilitate learning and knowledge creation, much of the literature is situated in formal online courses, suggesting a need to better understand the nuances of more informal learning spaces online.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 11 own‐account self‐employed workers (contractors and consultants who do not have staff).

Participants engaged in ways that fit with expectations, leveraged fluidity, played with boundaries, and meshed with work. These workers attempted to (re)configure online spaces to create the degree of connection and learning needed, although not always successfully. This study explores how participants participated in much less pedagogically inscribed spaces and foregrounds several issues related to online engagement: managing exposure, force‐feeding community, and navigating multi‐purpose spaces.

There are indications that these workers are moving toward more networked architectures of online participation. How the notion of online community continues to evolve warrants further research.

Although turning to an online community is sometimes the only viable learning option, online presence brings challenges to be addressed by practitioners and policy makers, including attending to the nature of relationships in and between different cyberspaces, information and media literacies required, and the implications of such extensive connectivity between people and their web‐technologies.

By exploring how adults reach out to others in “informal” online communities for learning purposes, this paper encourages researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and citizens to consider tensions and questions associated with cyberspace collectives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree of alignment between the views of key stakeholders on the development of learning spaces in a new teaching and learning building at a satellite campus of a regional university.

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with six stakeholders including senior executives, technical staff, academic staff and students. The interviews were transcribed and the data analysed to identify common and differing themes on the part of the respective interviewees in relation to learning spaces in general, and in relation to the new teaching and learning building in particular.

A comprehensive framework should be articulated by the university for its theme of personalised learning so that decisions can be made at lower levels of the university to operationalise the theme across academic and administrative functions. A clear definition of the blended learning pedagogy, which is proposed to be implemented as part of the personalised learning theme, should be articulated. The implications of the blended learning pedagogy for the design of learning spaces should be identified and clear design guidelines for learning spaces should be articulated. Learning spaces in the new building should be reviewed to achieve alignment with the personalised learning framework and the guidelines for learning spaces.

As this is a preliminary study with a small number of participants, a qualitative approach was taken to identify the indicative views of representatives of key stakeholders. The findings relate specifically to the context of this study at a regional Australian university.

This paper provides valuable insights into how a university’s philosophy on learning spaces manifests itself through creation and implementation of high-level policy and how that is interpreted and actioned by a range of stakeholders across campuses, including staff and students.

This paper reflects on the Bognor Regis Learning Resource Centre at the University of Chichester which opened in early 2012. In particular, it looks at how the spaces within the building were designed to enhance student learning and whether it meets student needs in practice.

The research was conducted by way of a case study which included interviews and questionnaires. In addition, observations and the measurement of sound levels resulted in the collection of statistical data for analysis.

The findings suggest that although the building is popular as a learning space and provides for a variety of learning styles, nevertheless, there are some problems with the interior design. In addition, future pressures and advances in technology will require further development of the building to keep pace with changing user needs and expectations.

The study contributes to the body of research regarding the use of library space for student learning in higher education. In addition, it makes practical suggestions for future developments that could also be considered by other higher education institutions.

Universities are investing billions of dollars in building infrastructure, with the design of learning spaces driven by technological developments and long-standing changes in pedagogical theory and practice. The aim of the study is to investigate the alignment between pedagogy and space by responding to a single research question: What is the relationship between the purpose, process, place and product of student learning in higher education?

Drawing on Beckers et al.’s (2015) purpose–process–place framework, the study uses an online survey and photo elicitation method to gather perspectives from educators and students in one Australian university about their learning spaces. A hybrid approach consisting of inductive and deductive coding to thematic analysis was used to find repeated patterns of meaning.

A total of 24 images of learning spaces were received from 8 educators and 16 students. Thematic analysis of the images and responses by participants highlights the importance of the pedagogical affordances of the learning environment and the product of learning, which are aligned to the purpose–process–place of learning.

This study provided a robust approach grounded in data to understand the alignment between space and pedagogy. Articulating students learning as an output of the alignment between space and pedagogy has important implications for the design of learning spaces and pedagogical practices in higher education. One limitation to the study, however, is noteworthy. The surveys had limited responses. Whilst the small response rates may not necessarily lead to biased results, it is acknowledged that a larger sample is likely to give more reliable results to enable the theory to be generalised.

The study’s findings extend the purpose–process–place framework to include pedagogical affordances and the product of learning. The purpose, process, place, pedagogical affordance and product framework posits that pedagogical affordances within a place must be deployed in such a way so that teaching and learning processes can contribute to enhancing educational goals or purpose to improve student learning outcomes, i.e. product. This framework provides a context for understanding the relationships between pedagogy and space in higher education.

This paper aims to identify user-centred facilities performance attributes of higher education buildings and how they can be used to evaluate individual learning spaces. These attributes are then consolidated for developing a post-occupancy evaluation (POE) framework in this context.

A systematic review of the literature on the POE of higher education buildings is conducted.

This study identifies 36 facility performance attributes in higher education buildings, which can be categorised into four dimensions: ambient; spatial; technology; and building support and services requirements. These facility performance attributes need to meet user requirements to achieve satisfactory feedback. It is also important to note that user requirements differ from one learning space to another; thus, it is essential to consider the characteristics of individual learning spaces.

The proposed evaluation framework is context-based and may not be suitable to evaluate other types of buildings. It may be further extended and enhanced to meet other facility management evaluation needs.

The POE framework developed in this research can be used to generate facilities management analytic to inform future design and improve existing higher education facilities.

This research has developed a holistic POE framework tool to meet user requirements in higher education buildings.

This paper aims to address tertiary education informal learning space preferences for learners’ informal learning activities. The study accentuates learners’ preferred informal academic learning space (IALS) for informal learning activities that required interaction and communication and collaboration.

The research is based on a survey questionnaire that participated by 1,079 diploma learners from Polytechnics’ technical and non-technical academic programmes in Malaysia.

The finding reveals that learners mostly preferred IALS that were categorized as semi-outdoor and connected to nature. Learners prefer to have IALS for collaborative learning activities with the appropriate information, communication and technology facilities and thermally conductive. Learners preferred an attractive layout design with comfortable furniture for informal learning activities. Apparently, learning space design is more focused on formal learning rather than informal learning.

This study grants a profound insight centred upon the learner’s perspective on the spatial alignment of education 4.0 learning ecosystem can be configured to enhance collaborative and self-regulated learning activities by distinguishing the critical preference of IALS.