What We Do

Implementing the LSC “feed-back loop” strategy involves a collaborative effort to:

• Identify and explore critical issues facing those responsible for ensuring all undergraduate learning spaces on their campus serve institutional goals for student learning, for prudent use of resources and for institutional distinction over the long-term.
• Spotlight and explore critical resources that advance what is known about linking theory and practice in the process of planning learning spaces and about utilizing that knowledge in the planning process.
• Encourage the development of new resources that capture the emerging best ideas in linking theory and practice, and facilitate the adaptation of those resources.
• Gather and tell stories widely about what works and why when campuses take seriously the opportunity to plan 21st century learning spaces and where there is evidence that the process worked for them.
• Develop and disseminate a repository of evidence-based research on spaces that work.

All of these strategies will be incorporated into LSC publications; workshops, seminars , colloquia; and consultancies.  The LSC website is the home-base for the LSC feed-back loop.  

As it evolves, the PKAL LSC website will include:

• Research papers on theories of learning, and papers exploring the relationship between learning and the built/natural environment, as well as those analyzing the process of planning.
• Selected resources available from the ‘PKAL facilities planning archives and from the work of collaborating partners.
• New resources emerging from LSC discussions and meetings and from the work of collaborators and the broad community of stakeholders.
• Announcements about and reports from LSC meetings and other activities.
• Announcements and alerts about meetings, articles, publications, and other activities of potential interest to the LSC community.

Stories (descriptions and analyses) of recently completed facilities planning projects, focusing on those that provide insights on addressing common planning challenges, how to achieve spaces that:  

• accommodate 21st century research-based pedagogies and curricular approaches
• encourage collaborative learning within and beyond the formal classroom
• dissolve boundaries between disciplines, levels of learners, formal and informal learning
• are contextual, that celebrate and enhance the campus aesthetic
• make creative, cost-effective, and long-term use of contemporary systems, tools and technologies for facility maintenance and operation
• illustrate promising practices in reusing, recycling, and renewing existing spaces
• signal to the broader community what is important to, and distinctive about, that college or university.

Vision, Goals & Strategies: A guide for planning learning spaces
A PKAL Learning Spaces Collaboratory Working Paper