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International figures on university expenditure on the development of next generation learning spaces (NGLS) are not readily available but anecdote suggests that simply retrofitting an existing classroom as an NGLS conservatively costs $AUD200,000, while developing new buildings often cost in the region of 100 million dollars and over the last five years, many universities in Australia, Europe and North America have developed new buildings. Despite this considerable investment, it appears that the full potential of these spaces is not being realised.

While researchers argue that a more student centred learning approach to teaching has inspired the design of next generation learning spaces (Tom, Voss, & Scheetz, 2008) and that changed spaces change practice (Joint Information Systems Committee, 2009) when ‘confronted’ with a next generation learning spaces for the first time, anecdotes suggest that many academics resort to teaching as they have always taught and as they were taught. This chapter highlights factors that influence teaching practices, showing that they are to be found in the external, organisational and personal domains.

We argue that in order to fully realise significant improvements in student outcomes through the sector’s investment in next generation learning spaces, universities need to provide holistic and systematic support across three domains – the external, the organisational and the personal domains, by changing policies, systems, procedures and localised practices to better facilitate changes in teaching practices that maximise the potential of next generation learning spaces.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a framework to guide learning and teaching practice in next generation learning spaces. The framework is informed by both learning and teaching theory and the current context of the sector. The framework provides guidance to those who teach in next generation learning spaces and is illustrated with examples of effective pedagogic practices that use the affordances of spaces while avoiding their limitations. The chapter discusses the tension between next generation learning space design and use. Design is influenced by drivers ranging from a need to accommodate ever-larger student numbers and responding to digital technologies and other developments in educational media, to providing for new approaches to learning. Use is determined by understandings of the teaching task, which can range from presentation by a teacher through to students working individually or in groups to generate meaningful knowledge, useful skills and professional values. In this chapter we identify drivers underpinning the creation and design of next generation learning spaces in universities today and associated expectations of the ways in which the spaces will be used. We reflect on understandings of sound pedagogic practice and work through to implications for learning and teaching in NGLS. In some cases advocated pedagogic practice asks teaching staff to make the most of spaces designed to allow students to engage constructively in their learning. In other cases it involves teaching constructively in spite of the design of the space.

This chapter looks to the future of research in next generation learning spaces. It begins with a review of the literature and concludes with the implications for future research. The review demonstrates that most ‘next generation learning space’ research has focused on the design and evaluation of spaces. We know that students like the spaces, but we don’t know if the spaces alone are effective in improving student learning or if the spaces in combination with changed pedagogic practices and/or curriculum design improve learning. There are many opportunities for researchers to provide much needed evidence to institutions on the interrelationships between next generation learning spaces design, teaching practices, curriculum design and learning outcomes.

The promise of Next Generation Learning Spaces appears to remain unfulfilled. This chapter explores why and how the design of professional learning for academics teaching in such spaces can and should be transformed. It takes a fresh look at why old professional development is failing and proposes a new way to engage academics in their own professional learning. Rather than continuing with traditional professional development that is most often, ad hoc, formal and centrally driven, comprising mandated professional development workshops and a website that may only be visited once, the chapter explores the move from ‘old’ professional development to ‘new’ professional learning. It draws on the fields of organisational theory, cognitive theory and behavioural economics.

New professional learning is characterised by a ‘pull’ rather than a ‘push’ philosophy. Academic staff themselves drive their own learning, choosing what, when and how they want to learn to become better teachers. Multiple and various learning opportunities embedded in day to day work are just-in-time, self-directed, performance-driven and evaluated within an organisational system. In this way the institutional setting influences behaviour by ‘nudging’ habits and setting defaults resulting in academics making the ‘right’ decisions and doing the ‘right’ thing. By addressing the compelling issue of how to enhance academic staff teaching capability, this chapter can help university leaders to think beyond the professional development approaches of yesterday. Aligning with this new direction will result in enhanced learning and teaching in the future.

This chapter explores a set of principles that underpin ensuring that the learning needs of all students are addressed in next generation learning spaces. With increasingly diverse higher education environments and populations, higher education needs to move from seeing student diversity as problematic and deficit-based, to welcoming, celebrating and recognising diversity for the contributions it makes to enhancing the experience and learning outcomes for all students. The principles of Universal Design for Learning (CAST, 2011) provide a framework for high-quality university teaching and learning, as well as guidance on the multiple methods and means by which all students can be engaged and learn in ways that best suit their individual styles and needs. An inclusive approach is important pedagogically and applies to both the physical and virtual environments and spaces inhabited by students. When the design of physical environments does not incorporate universal design principles, the result is that some students can be locked out of participating in campus or university life or, for some, the energy required to participate can be substantial. With the digital education frontier expanding at an exponential rate, there is also a need to ensure that online and virtual environments are accessible for all. This chapter draws on the relevant research and the combined experience of the authors to explore an approach to inclusive practices in higher education next generation learning spaces and beyond.

This chapter will explore how the places of learning might look in next generation learning spaces where learners traverse physical and virtual spaces using personalised learning strategies. It will examine how learning spaces may represent ubiquitous spaces in which the learner undertakes some form of study or learning. Although there has been extensive examination of the design of spaces for knowledge generation (Keppell & Riddle, 2012, 2013; Souter, Riddle, Sellers, & Keppell, 2011) there has been little attention given to how learners customise and personalise their own physical and virtual learning spaces as they traverse their learning journey. Seven principles of learning space design will be adapted for use by the personalised learner. Personalised learning strategies encompass a range of knowledge, skills and attitudes that empower the learner to take charge of their learning within next generation learning spaces. Personalised learning consists of six broad concepts: digital citizenship, seamless learning, learner engagement, learning-oriented assessment, lifelong and life-wide learning and desire paths. Teachers will need to assist learners to design their own personalised learning spaces throughout formal education to encourage learners to be autonomous learners throughout their lifetime. In order to assist learners in developing personalised learning strategies we need to teach them about learning space literacies. We can’t assume learners have the knowledge, skills and attitudes to be able to identify and effectively utilise appropriate learning spaces that optimises engagement.

This chapter will explore how assessment might look in next generation learning spaces where we have the potential to merge physical and virtual activities. Students now have ready access to a world of resources within their classroom and this fundamentally changes the nature of learning and assessment. The trend toward gamification of learning and assessment will be examined and the issue of assessment in new educational environments such as MOOCs will be explored. The impact of the semantic web (Web 3.0), where web objects and their context are all linked and objects have memory of how an individual student used them on previous occasions, will be discussed.

Next generation learning spaces encapsulate the affordances of both physical and virtual spaces and yet many assessment tasks are still designed as if students occupied only one of these spaces. Teachers will need to design more authentic, meaningful tasks that will engage students in using the full range of their capabilities and available resources, both physical and virtual. Students come together physically to engage in the social construction of their knowledge and can use the virtual spaces to broaden the social dimension of their learning environment.

Gamification of learning and assessment will require new approaches to defining tasks as teachers will need to decide how to incorporate diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment components within a more holistic educational environment. Game theory will be blended with learning theory in curriculum design and will result in the redesign of learning and assessment activities that are based on engagement (flow), user needs, and an evidence-centered design approach.

Technology provision and Next Generation Learning Spaces (NGLS) should respond to the active learning needs of twenty-first century learners and privilege multiple ‘pictures of learning’ and associated knowledge work. In this sense it is important for NGLS to be pedagogically agnostic – agile enough to cater for a range of pedagogical approaches within the one physical space. In this chapter, the democratising and potentially disruptive power of new digital technologies to facilitate the privileging of these multiple pictures of learning is explored, recognising the significant rise in student ownership and academic use of mobile technologies. With their escalating ubiquity and their facilitation of active knowledge work, research around considerations for the implementation of mobile digital technologies is canvassed, highlighting a range of issues to be considered. This is part of the ‘hidden work’ of technology implementation. Without this hidden work, the potential of NGLS in facilitating and privileging active learning and multiple pictures of learning is diminished and the potential for reinforcing already powerful and potentially exclusionary modes of knowledge work increases. Finally to assist in articulating the hidden work of digitally enabled NGLS, a model is proposed to help understand how ease of use and confidence impacts on student and academic knowledge work.

This chapter takes an implementation case study approach to inform project planners, senior academics, and academic developers about the design and implementation of a professional development (PD) program that prepared 700 faculty in an Australian university to reimagine their teaching practice. The catalyst for this transformation was the move from traditional classrooms to next generation learning spaces (NGLS) in the newly constructed and purpose-built environment of RMIT University’s Swanston Academic Building (SAB). The study identifies the challenges and change management issues faced by the project team, faculty, and other stakeholders.

Default teaching styles for many tertiary teachers can replicate the “best” and “worst” practices from their own student experience. As actors in their own classrooms tertiary teachers autonomously create learning environments that they consider appropriate to communicate the content, context, and culture of their particular discipline. The design and implementation of the PD and transition plan took into account the needs and perceptions of staff from each discipline area, the affordances of the new learning spaces, and their associated technologies.

This chapter contributes to a growing body of knowledge about the experience of academic and teaching staff during transition from traditional to NGLS, providing a description of the process undertaken in one university, the outcomes achieved, and the lessons learnt.