Process
Analysis
Your team will carefully consider the context and perspectives of diverse stakeholders, using extant data and collecting new data. You will be making design recommendations based on this preliminary needs assessment. You will have the opportunity to visit the space, and you will be provided with extant data, as well as contact information for faculty members who use the space and staff who are responsible for supporting the space.
Extant data:
The following extant data is available for your review via the class web site in the Course Materials section.
- The initial request from your client that includes a recording of a preliminary phone call, plus notes from meetings.
- Faculty Room Usage Report 2006
- Current floor plan of the ITS Faculty Room
New data sources:
Make sure to get gather data that represents a broad range of perspectives. When contacting sources, please use their time, and yours, wisely. For instance, have only one person from your team serve as the point of contact with a particular source.
Consider the following sources.
- Observation of the ITS Faculty Room
- ITS staff and leadership
- Faculty members who currently use the space**
- Faculty members who rarely or never use the space**
- Benchmarking other universities and organizations with cutting edge learning spaces and/or faculty resource centers. For instance,
- Literature and effective practices
- Educause Review: Issue devoted to learning space design, July/Aug 2005
- Denison University's Learning Spaces project site including their "Checklist for Improving Your Learning Spaces."
- Other??
Design Proposal: Wiki Document
You will submit your team proposal in the form of a wiki page on the Learning Space Design Wiki created for this course. The proposal should include at least the following information:
- Background
- Brief description of your needs assessment (i.e., who you talked to, extant data you reviewed, what you found, etc.)
- Design concept and recommendations (description of how the space is organized and a vision of how it would be used; a list of equipment, seating, fixtures, and other elements)
- A rough floor plan indicating proposed locations for hardware and seating.
- NOTE: The idea here is on the concept. Do not spend a lot of time with meticulous floor plans and blueprints. For instance, you could scan a hand drawn “bubble” sketch, or use a program such as Inspiration, PowerPoint, Visio, etc. to create your floor plan.
- Design rationale, including references to literature and design principles.
- A link to your accompanying electronic presentation “pitch.”
In Class Client Presentation
Each team will have one hour for the following activities:
- First, your team will deliver a 15-20 minute presentation to the class.
- Next, the class spends 10 to 15 minutes reading your team’s wiki page for further detail, jotting down questions, comments, for discussion.
- Next, you will have 15 minutes to lead an open discussion, Q&A session.
- Finally, your classmates will have 5 to 10 minutes to complete the rubric and submit it to the instructor via Blackboard.