YALE UNIVERSITYCENTER FOR TEACHING & LEARNING PIONEERING COMMUNITY PEDAGOGY TRANSPARENCY THROUGH FLEXIBILITY PLACEMAKING INCUBATION
SCUP 52 WORKSHOP EDITION
AT STERLING MEMORIAL LIBRARY
INTRODUCTION Helping young people prepare to thrive in the new normal of perpetual change demands new programs that advance the evolution of the educational process. These programs need architecture that enables new pedagogies and creates laboratories to reinvent them, approaching teaching and learning as experimental, iterative processes with students themselves as change agents. Yale's new Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) illustrates the special opportunities and challenges of programming and designing for these dynamic programs and their transitioning organizations. Yale assembled CTL from previously separate groups devoted to helping students study, write, and research, and faculty to teach and use instructional technology, to create an organization for improving student, faculty, and staff learning, teaching, and working holistically. Yale’s decision to locate CTL in Sterling Memorial Library gives it visibility and accessibility, symbolizing its importance to the University and equipping Sterling to join other evolving libraries as a collaboration center. The resulting facility creates a welcoming, inspiring place for fostering community centered on innovative teaching and learning.
PROGRAMMING The CTL program consists of 3 elements, a framework that crystallized during CTL’s intensive programming.
1. Teaching and Learning Spaces All teaching and learning spaces, from small to large, are multipurpose to avoid limiting creative space use. They offer a base complement of rearrangeable furniture, with fixed and movable technology and writing surfaces, to enable a wide range of active-learning and working modalities, including distance learning, seminars, group exercises, meetings, and teleconferences, both planned and spontaneous. A pool of shared, mobile resources offers additional equipment and furnishings.
2. Staff Working Spaces CTL staff includes administrators, coordinators, administrative assistants, pedagogy experts, designers, and technologists. With a key goal of encouraging interaction among staff members, and among staff, students, and faculty, the program emphasizes shared instead of individual space. Programming analyzed staff needs against a range of criteria to establish requirements, shifting to work-station-based, open work space with no private offices, a new model at Yale. Priority access to enclosed multi-purpose teaching/learning spaces accommodates periodic staff needs for privacy, helping make possible the freedom of this openness.
3. Connecting and Supporting Spaces This category includes spaces that are not staff-work or scheduledactivity spaces but that connect CTL together and support its program activities, including: a. Welcome Desk with support staff and technology. b. Touchdown Commons with movable furnishings and technology to support vibrant, informal collaboration. c. Studios for encountering new technology, practicing techniques, and preparing educational materials. d. Kitchenettes for catering and staff food. e. Storage for the logistics of multi-purpose use. The first 2 categories above provide an armature of portal, pathway, and place for organizing all other spaces and activities.
Future Proofing With a mission to change pedagogy, the Center’s programs and their space needs will evolve. The project prepared for CTL’s unknowable future activities by searching for unchanging, underlying principles with which to future-proof CTL’s design. Project participants asked themselves how architecture could promote continuous innovation, conceiving CTL as a laboratory for demonstrating, examining, and inventing innovative pedagogy. They asked themselves how architecture could promote collaboration, leading to removal of barriers among user groups. Transparency and flexibility emerged as powerful strategies for gathering community and enabling interaction without limiting outcomes or requiring periodic reconfigurations.
Best and Innovative Practices In order not to overlook promising concepts available as prototypes, programming reviewed cutting-edge collaboration and innovation centers. Study included higher-ed and R-and-D facilities, as well as research and experimentation by major furniture and equipment manufacturers that feed and drive these designs. Our findings confirmed the transformative influence of IT/ AV technologies, and the revolutions underway in space-use paradigms for education and work environments, leading to a design that maximizes openness, transparency, accessibility, flexibility, and responsiveness.
PROGRAM AREA SUMMARY
Below is an example of tools used to quantify and analyze evolving program areas.
Program 27-Oct-15
PROGRAM CATEGORY
Area - Square Feet
Name
Purpose
Quantity
Average Occupancy
Program
Provided
Program
Provided
Activities
Multi-Purpose Small MP-S Multi-Purpose Small MP-S
80 166
70 170
8 6
4 5
Multi-Purpose Medium MP-M
462
467
2
2
Multi-Purpose Medium MP-M
600
573
4
4
Multi-Purpose Large MP-L
900
880
1
2
Exhibition/Conference Anteroom
1,035
1035
1
1
Counselling, interview, study, tutoring. Distance learning, counselling, small group work, meetings Distance learning, counselling, medium group work, meetings Distance learning, counselling, medium group work, meetings Distance learning, counselling, medium group work, meetings Conferences, Large group work, open house, symposia
Large Class/Conference
1460
1460
1
1
Conferences, Large group work, open house, symposia up to 100
8355
8611 Private office, space for one occupant plus small conference table
Scheduling
Yes/No Dedicated space
Comments
TEACHING/LEARNING
Subtotal: Teaching/Learning - square feet CTL STAFF
up to 2 up to 10
Yes Yes
Actual: 126-200sf
up to 25
Yes
Actual: 454-479sf
up to 30
Yes
Actual: 532-636 sf
up to 45
Yes
up to 65
Yes
* Ave. (Actual: 868893) Joint scheduling by SML and CTL Joint scheduling by SML and CTL
Yes
Office A
O-A
150
159
3
2
Office B
O-B
100
123
8
9
64
68
60
55
100 30
76 90
1 1
1 1
NA NA
5220
5331
Arrival/Welcome/Lobby
950
950
1
1
No
Help Desk Touchdown/Lounge
320
320
1
1
120 200
120 200
1 1
1 1
TBD
TBD
50
50
1
1
Subtotal: Resource
1640
1640
TOTAL ( Net Square Feet)
15215
15582
Open Office Work Stations
Office Storage/Workroom Kitchenette
ST KIT
Subtotal: CTL Staff - square feet RESOURCES
Recording Studio Furniture/Staging Storage
REC ST
Restrooms
M/F
Lactation Room
L
Private office, space for one occupant plus 2 visitors Workstations for administrators and other staff, organized to support team activity
benching, individual and small group work spaces, distance learning capability sound proof, adjacent to touchdown space Storage for furniture, events, general needs
1 plus 3 to 4
Yes
1 plus 2
Yes Yes
No No Yes NA
1 restroom per floor now provided for staff
NA
For nursing mothers
NA
`
Not sep. from Circulation Incl in general circulation space
Pending Code review
Promoting Collaboration: Warmth and transparency for inviting community and inspiring interaction
DESIGN CONCEPTS
CTL’s planning and design positions it strategically to leverage existing university assets. It transforms under-utilized space and creates a new campus destination along a popular pedestrian pathway. CONTEXT-AWARE PLANNING
Envisioned as a significant destination on campus, CTL straddles the extension of a major pathway in Sterling Memorial Library running through the Bass Center from the heart of Cross Campus to a new main entrance on York Street. As an experimental educational environment, CTL is a facility and program not previously found in the library. Its character honors learning, expresses the high importance Yale assigns to this new pedagogical approach, and resonates with the august architecture of the building and surrounding campus.
CONTEXT DIAGRAM
This diagram shows how an expanded campus center library connects three campus pedestrian arteries: York Street, High Street (Rose Walk) and Cross Campus. Within, a continuous path links three distinct library precincts - SML, Bass Library, and CTL. As in the other two precincts, CTL’s interior architecture possesses a distinct character expressive of its purpose.
SPACE PLANNING
As seen in the schematic design at right, CTL parallels York Street where a high ceilinged, naturally lit zone hosts multi-purpose and work areas. An inboard zone with lower ceiling provides more work areas.
Multi-P urpose
WALL STREET
Space planning clarified and gave form to the program’s 3 classes of activity space: multi-purpose active-learning/meeting (blue), work (orange), and circulation/touchdown (yellow). Within this framework, design focused on creating transparency and flexibility to enable new pedagogies and catalyze their evolution.
Existing SML Conference Work Statio n
Stairs/Elevators
Circulation/T ouchdown
Resourc e
Music Libra ry Relocations
Music Library
Closely spaced columns reinforce a central pathway and touchdown commons whose repetitive order resonates with Sterling’s historic architecture.
YORK STREET
Midway along the York Street commons is the new main entrance and heart of CTL, with a Welcome Center and new monumental stair. At this hub, all functions and paths meet, including a perpendicular pathway back to the Music Library and historic heart of SML.
First Floor - Program Study Plan
SPACE PLANNING (CONT.) Workspace and scheduled-activity spaces interlock and distribute themselves evenly around the armature of unscheduled touchdown commons for orientation, access, and flexibility. A later evolution of these plans eliminated enclosed offices altogether in favor of maximizing collaboration and space utilization, fully embracing the shared-workarea model.
Work Statio n
Stairs/Elevators
Circulation/T ouchdown
Resourc e
Music Libra ry Relocations
Multi-P urpose
Music Library
Glass partitions provide for acoustic separation among staff, scheduledactivity, and touchdown zones while maintaining visual openness to invite collaboration among students, faculty, and staff.
Open
Operable glass partitions along the York Street spaces provide variable boundaries that can respond to user desires and program needs. Interior roll-down shades provide variable visual privacy for selected boundaries.
Second Floor - Program Study Plan
Furniture Planning: Open Collaboration-Scape Variety, comfort, convenience, and warmth invite people to meet, sit, and extend interactions
FURNITURE PLANNING In CTL’s open plan, furnishings play an important place-making role, forming a ‘collaboration-scape’ for the community’s activities. Furniture selection prioritized utility, durability, and rearrangeability for activelearning and work programs, plus comfort, warmth, and even whimsy for inviting use and putting people at ease. Contemporary furniture designed for open-offices forms a harmonious collection that can move and regroup in response to changing uses. Soft colors create a backdrop that features people as a focal point. Wood materials connect to Sterling Library tradition. Work stations offer surface and seating options, including variable height, and form multiple types of groupings.
First Floor - Furniture Study Plan
Technology Planning: Enabling innovative teaching and learning without technology dominating the experience
TECHNOLOGY PLANNING State-of-the-art technology plays a support role at CTL. IT and AV enable innovative programming via wired and wireless, fixed and portable systems, subservient to place making for welcoming and inspiring community. Video conferencing and emerging technologies like VR increasingly expand CTL’s community beyond those physically present. Flexible infrastructure threaded throughout anticipates continuous change in these technologies.
First Floor - Technology Study Plan
Interactive Info Display
Room-Scheduling Touch Screen
Teleconferencing
Virtual Reality
Integrated Planning: Visually open, variable separations with rearrangeable furniture, equipment, and technology for enabling collaboration
VALIDATION Programming and design led to a mix of multi-purpose spaces and use patterns whose utilization performance is not readily modeled and assessed by available academicspace-planning formulas. Scheduling Simulation Test To test the schematic design’s accommodation of program for activelearning/meeting spaces (highlighted spaces at right), Newman and Yale turned to scheduling simulations. They employed the university’s master scheduling platform to testschedule CTL’s existing scheduled activities, with a 15% growth allowance, into the designed spaces’ areas and seating capacities.
Multipurpose Utilization Study: (M-F) Morning/Afternoon/Evening [0-20%, 21-50%, 51-100%]
This simulation quantified the utilization of each designed space in detail throughout the actual hours of the university’s day. It confirmed the schematic design’s accommodation of a varied mix of activities and schedules, with capacity to spare, and identified refinements needed for further design work. Quantifying potential CTL activities
Simulated Space-Utilization results
VISUALIZATIONS
Tools for vividly modeling potential outcomes and evaluating design alternatives
Design for change - Flexible, transparent, technology-rich spaces for evolving active learning, including operable glass partitions.
A great place to hang out - encouraging collaboration and innovation with a welcoming destination space
Removing barriers - Open work environments improve organizational flexibility and space utilization while promoting collaboration among students, faculty, and staff.
Promoting collaboration- What mix of architectural conditions and technology will bring out the best in collaborators? Double screens? Video-blue walls?
The main street effect - Maximizing interaction with collaboration facilities along the shared main path.
Promoting collaboration- Study led to fewer screens and more writeable surfaces in the finished facility, which will continue to be studied and refined in use.
FINAL PLANS: 1ST FLOOR Synthesizing the program, furniture, technology, and other studies, resulted in the above final configurations to maximize community, transparency, flexibility, and incubation.
FINAL PLANS: 2ND FLOOR
OUTCOMES Sense of Place: A transparent village surrounding a welcoming commons
Fostering Community for Change: Enabling collaboration for pedagogical innovation
Bringing People Together: Shared pathways maximize spontaneous encounters
Dissolving Barriers: Transparent interfaces reveal and invite, enabling collaboration among constituencies and facilitating observation to drive innovation.
The Commons: A campus destination and place to see and be seen, meet people and ideas, and begin journeys and explorations
The Commons: Heart of the transparent village and its community life
The Commons: Front yard to the transparent places of work, inviting collaboration with staff while providing acoustic separation
The Commons: Main-street storefronts invite passersby to discover and try new involvements
Responsiveness Users can reconfigure multi-use-space furnishings and equipment, adjust lighting, write on walls, tune into wifi or plug into floor and wall receptacles
Flexibility: Variable, transparent spatial boundaries and modular furniture readily reconfigure.
Variety: Activity areas from small to large, enclosed and open, support a range of teaching, learning, and working modalities.
Empowering Community Technology equips interior architecture to enable innovative programming and community communications
Incubation: Technology plays a supporting role in most areas, enabling innovative collaboration without dominating. The intensity of technology increases in two special spaces to create opportunities for students and teachers to encounter and master the latest in teaching and learning equipment and programs prior to utilizing them throughout CTL and the University at large. Conceived as “Studios” rather than “Laboratories,” the larger Learning Studio and more intimate Recording Studio help promote technology literacy and create new tools for classroom and online use.
Learning Studio Stations for new technology and displays surround a central teaching/demonstration area
Recording Studio Miniature audio-video studio supports production of teaching materials and capture of practice teaching for self-improvement
Intimacy: Human-scale opportunities for people to gather in small numbers
Openness: Work areas freed from walls that divide people and inhibit collaboration
Camaraderie and Communication: Ideas and enthusiasm moving at the speeds of sound and light
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Yale University Center for Teaching and Learning
Yale University Office of the Provost
Architect Newman Architects
Jennifer Frederick, Executive Director
Scott Strobel, Deputy Provost for Teaching and Learning
Structural Engineer Michael Horton Associates
Lucas Swineford, Executive Director of Digital Education
Yale University Office of Facilities
MEP/FP/IT/Lighting Engineer AKF Engineers
John-Paulo Fernandes, Associate Director of Project Planning
Acoustical Engineer Jaffe Holden
James Fullton III, Senior Planner
Code Consultant Philip R. Sherman, PE
Brian D’Orlando, Associate Project Manager
Construction Manager / Constructor Standard Builders, Inc. Photography Peter Newman Nicholas Vittorio Drawings and Text Newman Architects Book Design Nicholas Vittorio
SCUP 52 WORKSHOP
TAKING CHARGE OF ACTIVE LEARNING FOR PERPETUAL CHANGE
Subject:
Creating facilities that both enable new pedagogies and serve as laboratories to invent them, approaching teaching and learning as experimental, iterative processes that include students among active change agents.
Focus:
Examining this topic through the lens of Yale’s new Center for Teaching and Learning clarifies challenges and opportunities of planning for these dynamic programs and their transitioning organizations.
Learning Objectives:
1. Communicating Vision: Articulate institutional needs and aspirations for negotiating change. 2. Programming and Design: Reinforce mission and facilitate progress toward a future vision. 3. Technology: Activate teaching and learning. 4. Future-Proofing: Accommodate and catalyze pedagogical change.
Workshop Sequence: INTRODUCTION 10 mins • Welcome and presenter bios • Learning objectives • Process overview • Solicitation of questions • View introductory video
GROUP PROJECT 2 40 mins • Present crowd-sourced information and problem statement • Group project activity • Collect discussion questions • Group presentation and discussion
GROUP PROJECT 1 20 mins • Problem statement • Group project activity • Group presentation and discussion
PANEL DISCUSSION 50 mins
DIGITAL CASE STUDY / TOUR 40 mins • CTL orientation overview • CTL digital tour with commentary GALLERY WALK 40 mins • Participatory writing activity to crowd-source vocabulary and concepts BREAK 10 mins
Presenters:
Jennifer Frederick, PhD Executive Director Yale University Center for Teaching & Learning Lucas Swineford Executive Director of Digital Education Yale University Center for Teaching & Learning Howard Hebel, AIA Associate Principal Newman Architects
Group Project 1
This activity involves participants in hands-on configuration of space to accomplish educational goals. 1. Individual reflection: Write down several of the most pressing pedagogical challenges at your institution or in your practice. 2. Group discussion and commitment: After each person briefly shares their challenges with the table, select one challenge of mutual interest as the focus of this activity. 3. Collaboration: Write words and phrases that express the challenge as a goal to be accomplished through space design. 4. Product: Draw simple diagrams to represent visually the group’s ideas about configuring a space to accomplish the goal. You will build on this work on the second group project. 5. *Choose a spokesperson to present your ideas and drawings to the workshop.
Gallery Walk:
Questions employed in the Gallery Walk activity. 1. Which features of the Yale Teaching and Learning Center do you notice, and how would you describe them? 2. What factors can influence student learning? 3. What constitutes teaching in the 21st century at your institution or in your practice? 4. How can space foster teaching and learning as reciprocal processes? 5. How can space foster community? 6. Describe the basic technology needed for today’s teaching-andlearning spaces. 7. How can technology energize active learning without dominating or predetermining the experience? 8. How can a space accommodate activities of individuals and groups of significantly different sizes equally well?
NOTES
Group Project 2
NOTES
This activity builds on vocabulary and space-configuring skills introduced in the earlier activities to extend the group project. Return to the educational goal of the previous activity and discuss it in light of the Yale facility example and vocabulary and principles crowd-sourced in the Gallery Walk activity. How do you see it differently now? 1. Group discussion: Revisit and refine the words and phrases you chose to articulate your educational goal in a form that can be accomplished by space design. 2. Collaboration: Discuss how you would configure and furnish space and equip it with technology to help accomplish the goal. 3. Product: Draw simple diagrams to represent visually your ideas about configuring, furnishing, and equipping space with technology to accomplish the goal. 4. *Choose a spokesperson to present your ideas and drawings to the workshop.
Panel Discussion Questions:
Categories to stimulate thinking about questions to submit for the panel discussion at the end of the workshop. 1. Communicating 2. Programming 3. Designing
4. Technology 5. Future-Proofing
Vocabulary:
Starting points for communicating needs and design responses. Community Transparency Flexibility Incubation
Active Learning Collaboration Innovation
NOTES
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