Dive Brief:

• Popular new approaches to school design should be carefully considered and well planned, creating school spaces that are agile enough to be multifunctional — and then adjustable based on user feedback, according to a retail space designer who has turned her eye to schools, EdSurge reports.
• These initiatives require a designer approach, specifically design thinking, a user-centered method where a team identifies a problem, develops several solutions with input from users, and quickly makes prototypes they can revise and learn from for that space and others in the future, says school design consultant Rebecca Hare, who is speaking this week at a Blended and Online Learning Design conference sponsored by CUE.
• The three “Big Why” reasons for improving school design, according to EdSurge, include providing more student automomy, space that accommodates project-based learning, and space that allows “a seamless fusion of technology and environment in an era where ubiquitous Wi-Fi and mobile devices have untethered kids from the traditional concept of a classroom,” says Ware’s co-presenter Bill Selak, a tech director for a San Francisco K-8 school who has led design changes.

Dive Insight:

School design is being discussed at conferences like CUE’s and in flexible  classrooms, where teachers are moving away from front-facing rows of desks to enhance movement, collaboration and student autonomy about how and where they work. Some 1.2 million Edutopia readers named flexible seating as one of the top two initiatives they’d like to undertake next, and nearly all those who tried it were “never going back,” according Steve Merrill, the publication's chief content editor. 

Research suggests the move improves behavior and engagement, but experts say it requires careful planning and teacher training.  “Everybody comes to me with the catalog and says, ‘We love these tables, what do you think?” Hare told EdSurge. "Nobody comes to me and says, ‘We have this incredible vision for learning, what do you think?’"

Such changes not only should affect teaching strategies (and can enhance efforts to use flipped learning) but can creatively change the schedule and pace of the class session (especially as students move around). Selak’s school is looking at overall schedule changes to give students more flexibility in the “when” and “how” of their learning, in addition to the “where.” Also, student participation in designing changes can be an important learning opportunity to gain critical thinking, design and collaboration skills.

Support for these efforts can range from a teacher’s Facebook request for furniture to a serious fundraising pitch to the district or the community, members of which are sometimes willing to directly support an education project they can see take shape or even use.